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'ALL HAIL' 



'ALL HAIL' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS 
ON THE BIBLE 



BY 
BARONESS FREDA de KNOOP 



NEW YORK 

HAROLD OBER 

1911 






Copyright, 1911, By 
FREDA de KNOOP 






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TO 
BARBARA, 

My Grandchild and Godchild. 



PREFACE 

An enthusiastic love of the Bible must be my excuse for publishing 
this book. To my love of the Bible has been joined a love of 
Italian art, which has developed during many visits to Italy and 
which has guided the choice of my illustrations. The book, at first 
planned for young children, has grown into a serious attempt to 
help older children and even adults to understand the Bible, to 
help those, I mean, who have not the use of the best commentaries 
and the best Bible dictionaries. I have been aided in my work 
by kind friends to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Mrs. Thynne's 
beautiful reproductions of celebrated pictures will, I feel sure, 
appeal to all. The work of editing has proved very heavy, for 
much of the book has had to be rewritten. This work has been 
carried out by an old friend of mine, the Rev. J. Verschoyle, to 
whom I am deeply grateful. He has done his best, without dis- 
cussing debated questions, to im'prove a work conceived from 
the traditional point of view. In my ignorance I did not realise 
the vast extent and complexity of the task I had undertaken in 
attempting to deal with the whole Bible, book by book. I realise 
it now with all humility. 

The title of my book, All Hail! came to m'e during a conversa- 
tion with a friend, and appealed to me as being among the first 
words (and those words addressed to women) which our Blessed 
Lord spoke after His Resurrection. St. Matthew xxviii. verse 9 : 
'And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, 
saying, All hail' 

Travelling in Italy, I learned to feel that most of its art treasures 
may be regarded as a beautiful Biblical picture-book. As I emerged 
from the enthusiasm' of ignorance into the enthusiasm of a little 
more knowledge, I thought I would like to try to help simple 
people, and particularly mothers and children, to understand the 
Book of books. My own standpoint may be expressed in the words 
of Jeremiah vi. verse 16: 'Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the 
ways, and see, and ask the old paths, where is the good way, and 
walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls;' but this stand- 
point has become modified by taking into consideration the changed 
and changing conditions of to-day, and the need, which I have 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

learned specially in America, of pushing on ahead. My heart goes 
out to my native land, to Italy, to the Holy Land, to the swarm- 
ing millions of India, in the longing that all may be brought into 
the Kingdom and under the influence of our Blessed Lord. My 
heart goes out to America with the same longing. I pray that 
these simple teachings on the Bible may be of use to some of 
the many to whom my heart goes out in goodwill: to people of 
Canada, of Africa, and of Australia. Our needs are many and 
various, but the Holy Bible can supply all our needs out of its 
fulness. 

Here I may be permitted to give a passage from a letter to me 
from Mr. Verschoyle, the friend who has edited my book, which 
will, I think, be found interesting. 

'The Tercentenary of the Authorised Version makes the year 
191 1 particularly appropriate for the publication of a popular book 
on the Bible, designed to help ordinary people to a better under- 
standing of that great library of religious knowledge. Our debt 
as a nation to the Authorised Version of the Bible is very great, 
for it has helped to form much of what is best in our national 
life; and to inspire much of what is best in our national literature. 

*In this connection I may quote a passage from page 24 of your 
book, which deals with the value of the Old Testament as a means 
of teaching morals to children, and is fairly representative of the 
contents of the book. 

' "At this point we may say a few words on the value of the whole 
book of Genesis, as indeed of the whole Old Testament as a means 
of teaching morality to the young, and teaching it as practical re- 
ligion. The Eastern is the prince of story-tellers, and Genesis in 
particular, and the Old Testament in general, teach by stories, the 
very best means for teaching children. Genesis, moreover, even 
beyond the other Old Testament books, has an atmosphere of its 
own, the atmosphere of God, which of itself is invaluable, as 
stimulating the moral and spiritual growth of the child. The 
moral teaching of the Old Testament is never dull, and no one takes 
it in more readily than the child. Childhood is obviously the time 
to learn moral law, for the fullest good effects of obedience to 
the moral law are only to be had by beginning in childhood the 
self-mastery which is the secret of the right life. In the hands 
of competent teachers, of parents in the home, and masters and 
mistresses in the school, the Old Testament remains the very best 
practical handbook for the teaching of morals to boy or girl, and 
it is hoped that these simple readings and explanations of the Bible 
may be a help and encouragement to parents and even to school 



PREFACE ix 

teachers to bring home the life-giving contents of the Bible to 
the children in their charge. 

' "It was the Old Testament of which St. Paul wrote to Timothy 
that it was given by inspiration of God, 'that the man of God may 
be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.' The effect 
on the moral life is one of the tests of true inspiration, and the 
Old Testament emerges triumphantly from this test, in the case 
of adults, as well as in the case of children. The Bible (the New 
Testament, of course, but not without the Old) is God's chief 
instrument for the education of the world, in that which is most 
important, the power of a righteous life. The regular reading 
of the Bible and a practical knowledge of its contents have formed 
the character of the English-speaking race in the past and are 
needed to continue it in the future. We cannot live without 
ideals, 'but the Bible,' says Bishop Westcott, 'not only offers to us 
an ideal of service and sympathy and fellowship, of love to God 
and man, which answers to the noblest aspirations of all men, but 
also supplies us with a motive to seek it and power to approach 
it, the sense of Christ's love for us, and the sense of Christ's 
presence.' " 

'This unrivalled power in the Old Testament of training the 
moral sense in children is perhaps due to the intense interest 
aroused in them by jt^ vivi^ Tories of real men and women, full 
of breathing liie.run arfj o) hni' 

'Tolstoy found this power of the Old Testament in rousing 
interest absolutely unique in his remarkable experiments in the 
schooling of peasant children: "Of all the oral subjects I tried 
during three years, nothing so suited the understanding and mental 
condition of the boys as the Old Testament. The same was the 
case in all the schools that came under my observation. . . . 
It seems ta rtle that the book of the childhood of the race will 
always be the best book for the childhood of each man . . . 
To alter or to abbreviate the Bible . . . appears to me bad. All, 
every word, in it is right, both as revelation and as art." 

'After Tolstoy had tried in vain with other books and other 
teaching to win his pupils he says, "Then I tried reading the Bible 
to them, and quite took possession of them. . . . The- corner 
of the veil was lifted, and they yielded themselves to me com- 
pletely. They fell in love with the book and with learning and 
with me. It only remained for me to guide them on. . . . To 
reveal to the pupil a new world, and to make him, without pos- 
sessing knowledge, love knowledge, there is no book but the Bible. 
There are no other works — at least, I know of none — which in so 



X PREFACE 

compressed and poetic a form contain all those sides of human 
thought which the Bible unites in itself. All the questions raised 
by natural phenomena are there dealt with. Of all the primitive 
relations of men with one another, the family, the State, and re- 
ligion, we first become conscious through that book. . . . The 
development of a child or a man in our society without the Bible 
is as inconceivable as that of an ancient Greek would have been 
without Homer. The Bible, both in its form and in its contents, 
should serve as a model for all children's primers and all reading 
books. A translation of the Bible into the language of the common 
folk would be the best book for the people." 

'A book which Tolstoy, certainly not an ecclesiastically-minded 
layman under priestly domination, found absolutely essential to 
modern education will never, one thinks, be given up in our 
English elementary schools. But there are ominous signs of a 
growing disregard of the Bible among adults of the wealthier as 
well as the poorer classes, which, if it continues, is bound to 
influence the children. ' 

'As that great student of the Bible, Bishop Westcott, wrote twelve 
years ago: "There is much discussion about the Bible, but, as I 
fear, little knowledge of it. We are curious to inquire — and it 
is a reasonable curiosity — when this book and that, was written; 
but- we are contented to be ignorant of what this book or that 
book contains. We remain blind to the magnificent course of 
the Divine education of the world . . . nothing less than our 
national character is at stake in our regard for the Bible. . . . 
We are beginning to forget, under new conditions of life, what 
has made England great, and what, as I believe, alone can keep it 
great." 

'Bishop Westcott's words warn us against a national danger, 
which has not lessened in the last twelve years. This book is an 
attempt to supply parents and teachers who have not time to con- 
sult more ambitious or learned works with an easy help to the 
better understanding of the Bible which may encourage a closer 
study of its life-shaping contents.' So ends my extract from Mr. 
Verschoyle's letter. 

With this introduction I leave to the judgment of the public this 
very humble endeavour to encourage in the average reader a more 
intelligent study, of the Bible, not forgetting, when we have done 
our best, what the greatest and most highly-equipped student of the 
Bible of late years called 'the vast and unapproachable mysterious- 
ness of all truth. Because we see clearly what we do see, we shall 
know that we do not and we cannot see all.' (I Corinthians 



PREFACE xi 

xiii. verse 12 (R.V. with marginal reading) : Tor now we see in a 
mirror darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but 
then shall I know fully even as also I have been fully known.' 

FREDA DE KNOOP. 

Among the books that have been used in preparing this volume, 
to parts of which it is indebted, are the following: Dr. Hastings' 
larger Bible Dictionary in five volumes ; the Cambridge Bible for 
Schools and Colleges ; Bishop Westcott's and Bishop Lightfoot's 
Commentaries on Books of the New Testament; The Speaker's 
Commentary. Driver's Genesis and Ramsay's and Farrar's works 
dealing with the life and work of St. Paul; also Bishop Ryle of 
Winchester's Early Narratives of Genesis, and the Bishop of Lon- 
don's excellent little books dealing with the diiEficulties of the Old 
Testament and the New. 



FOREWORD TO CHILDREN 

For you all, dear children, this book has been written, and to j'ou 
this foreword is addressed. It was for you that the whole book 
was, in the first instance, conceived and written. It has grown 
insensibly from' being an attempt to make the Bible intelligible to 
young children, into a continuous account of all the books of the 
Bible from a convinced but not a narrow conservative standpoint, 
a modified traditional point of view. 

(You, my dear children, will find the study of many of the books 
of the Bible too difficult for you at present, but it is my hope that 
your parents, especially your mothers, and perhaps your school- 
teachers, will get such help in my chapters as will enable them 
to instruct you intelligently, and, may I add, with some of the loving 
enthusiasm with which this book was written. 

And now, my dear children, let me say a few words specially 
to you to whom this book is dedicated. 

God is Love. God is Light. God is a Spirit. God is a Con- 
suming Fire. It is the Bible that tells us this. Let us talk about 
this a little, and together try to find out what this means. Love 
is the greatest thing in the world. Love can accomplish anything. 
Whatever wonderful powers we may possess, all is of no value 
unless we have Love — love for our Creator and love for our fellow- 
creatures. God is Light. We know what a beautiful thing is 
light; without it life fails and dies. God is a Spirit. This means 
that we must not think of God as being as we are, limited by the 
flesh. Nobody can see Him here with the eyes of the body. When 
we go to Heaven we shall see Him with the eyes of the soul with 
which we do already see H'im, to some extent, through the veil 
of our flesh. His beloved Son Jesus Christ has assured us of this. 

During our life on earth we feel God's nearness to us. He 
chooses our hearts to live in, because that is the best part of us. 
I am sure you have heard people sometimes say: This man has 
courage; or, That woman speaks the truth. Can we see courage? 
No. Courage is not blue or green. Can we touch truth? No. 
Truth has no corners or edges. And so we come to understand 
that there are quite a number of things which we cannot see, but 
which are, nevertheless, of the very greatest importance. Thus, 



xiv FOREWORD TO CHILDREN 

when we are told that God is a Spirit, we begin to realise that 
this means a great deal. 

God is the first cause of everything. Nothing can exist without 
Him. God is a consuming fire. The explanation of this is, that 
all wickedness shall finally be destroyed. In its proper time, all 
wickedness shall be made by God to pass away, so as to give place 
to Love and Light and Spirit. God is All-Powerful, and unites 
all good in His One and Only Supreme Being. 

My dear little child, have you ever thought anything at all about 
such things? Who are you? A little boy or a little girl? Perhaps 
your name is Barbara? Perhaps you have a little sister and a little 
brother? Perhaps you have a mother and a father. You have a 
home; you have a garden with flowers in it. You see and feel 
God's beautiful sunshine. Perhaps you count the raindrops, going 
pit-a-pat down the window-pane, in your nursery; have you given 
it a thought who it is that is so kind and loving as to give you 
such delightful things? 

You remember, I am sure, that you had a birthday some time 
ago, and that you got presents — perhaps a cart and horse ; perhaps 
a Paris dollie which came across the Channel and wished you many 
happy returns of the day; perhaps you had a birthday cake, with 
three, four, five, or even more candles upon it : everything was 
given to you in order to give you pleasure. Then your mother 
said to you : 'Are you a happy child ? Will you not come and say, 
Thank you?' 

And have you not felt that you must at once put your arms round 
her neck and your father's and give them a kiss and a tight love- 
squeeze, and tell them how you love them? Well, God is watching 
over you all the while. He wishes you, little boy and little girl, 
to love your Heavenly Father because He is the Giver of all good 
things. 

God begins everything and He never ends working. The Lord 
commands us and all dear children to love Him with all our 
hearts ; to say to Him : ' "Our Father," pity my simplicity. Look 
down upon me and teach me to love Thee with all my heart. I 
wish to please Thee, and to be an obedient child.' 

The Lord has loved us from the very beginning, long before we 
even knew that we had a mother and a father, when we were a 
tiny long-clothes baby, and when we were taken to church to be 
christened. 

You have not forgotten, have you, when you were taken to 
church, and saw the holy water of Baptism bein^ put on your 
little brother's forehead. You were told to be very good and 



FOREWORD TO CHILDREN xv 

quiet in church, and to pray to God for the tiny baby, asking Him 
to let the child grow up a good boy. But God does love us so. 
He it is who puts us into this beautiful world to live in for the 
present, until that time comes when He calls us into a far more 
beautiful place still — His Own Home, called Heaven — ^there to 
live with Him for ever. 

God gives you your mother. She prays for you. God puts all 
good and pure thoughts into her head and heart, to love you so 
dearly, to care for you so tenderly, to feed you so that you are 
not hungry, to clothe you so that you are not cold. She teaches 
you to read your Bible, as her mother taught the Blessed Virgin 
in our picture. W!hy has the Lord given you, little girlie, your 
blue eyes? Put your hands over them and close them tight. What 
happens ? Is it light or dark now ? Do you like it so much when 
you cannot see? I think that you will say: 'I do not want to keep 
my hands there any longer ; I want to open my eyes wide.' And 
I fancy you will say: 'Oh! how glad I am that God has made me 
able to see.' You will say: 'I am grateful to Him for having 
given me eyes with which to see so much. I can find my way in 
the fields ; I can see the blue sky. I can see my dear doggies when 
they come a walk with me, when they caper about, enjoying them- 
selves, running after the poor little bunnies. I can see my be- 
loved pony when his big, clever eyes look into mine, while he 
seems to be telling me to get on his back and have a lovely canter 
all along the breezy downs, feeling the fresh wind on my cheeks.' 

There is simply no end to the things you can see. You long to 
say: 'How I do thank my Heavenly Father for giving me eyes.' 
Another time you go a walk. It is Sunday. Your nurse takes 
you past the village church. It is all overgrown with ivy. Little 
dicky-birds come flying from among the ivy; some of them have 
their nests snugly tucked away there. The robin redbreast, the 
busybody sparrow, the sailing swallow, the mellow-voiced sky- 
lark, all of them and many others meet together ; leave their re- 
spective nests, and raise their notes, singihg away and thinking : 
*My home is so cosy; I can fly, I can see God's beautiful sunrise 
and sunset. I want to praise my Maker, I am such a happy birdie.' 
Away goes he, soaring up, ever higher. You lose sight of him, 
and you cannot hear him more. You hear something else. What 
is this? People are singing in church, 'Onward, Christian soldiers.' 
You keep very quiet, so as not to disturb anybody; you put yoar 
finger to your mouth and you whisper to your little sister to be 
quiet. You say to her: 'Listen!' Why do you listen? Because 
you wish to hear. We love to hear beautiful music. We love to 



xvi FOREWORD TO CHILDREN 

listen to our mother when she sings to us, or to our father when 
he plays for us. We are thinking of our winter evenings at home, 
when we children come down after tea. 

Then there are our brave soldiers we love to hear playing, when 
they go marching along following their inspiring band, when we 
hear and join in 'God save our Gracious King.' All of us love 
to be able to hear, and we ask ourselves: 1 wonder who it is that 
gives us our hearing, gives us our sight, gives us our thoughts, 
gives us our being able to love : in fact, who it is that gives 
us everything. Is it always the Same One? Is it always our 
loving Heavenly Father?' And we know it is He and only He. 
There is nothing that can be thought of, there is nothing that can 
be done without God. You cannot do one single thing, little or 
big, without God seeing and knowing it. 

God, the Holy Spirit, desires us to love Him. This is His con- 
dition. This He expects from us. Only thus can we show Him 
our gratitude. Although we do not see the Lord, He, because He 
is the All-powerful God, and can do everything, sees us all the 
while. The Lord is present everywhere. He sees us, when we are 
trying to be good, and then He is pleased. He sees us when we 
are disobedient and then He is sore displeased. Why is the Lord 
not satisfied with us when we do wrong? Why is He sad? He so 
great, we so small. 

Why does He care about a tiny child? Because the Lord loves 
it so dearly. You little child, you do not like to see your brother 
crying when he is in pain and ill, do you ? This makes you very 
sorry. You cuddle him, and you say: 'There, there, don't cry; it 
will soon be better.' In the same way, but infinitely more tenderly 
and wisely, does our Heavenly Father care about each one of us. 
He wishes us to be happy. He has given us many beautiful gifts, 
and expects us to be obedient and good, which alone can secure 
happiness for us. Don't you therefore think that you must try 
hard to please God, when He has done so much for us? 

There is an illness which causes God to be most sad of all. 
This illness is called a guilty conscience. This means, that when 
we do wrong, something right inside of us tells us that we have 
done that which we ought not to have done. We feel very un- 
comfortable, ill at our ease. Something in our hearts, there 
where God lives, speaks to us and chides us. We know at once 
that it is our conscience speaking. God has given us our con- 
science, and wishes us all always to listen to what it tells us, 
before it is too late. He has given us our conscience as our best 
friend. As soon as ever we know that wickedness is driving out 



FOREWORD TO CHILDREN xvii 

love and light from our hearts, we must pluck it out, fling it away, 
and make a bonfire of it. God's Fire consumes all wickedness. 
•Just as the fire burns up the bad weeds in the garden. 

I want to say to you some more about our conscience; I hope 
afterwards you will never more forget what conscience is. Your 
father has told you never to tell an untruth. Remember that all 
your life. You must never be afraid of speaking the truth. You 
can never help feeling very much afraid when you tell an untruth, 
I will you why it is so. Supposing you speak up bravely and 
you say: 'I am very sorry indeed, I have broken a glass.' Or 
you say : T have been unkind, I have snatched away the dollie from 
my little sister, and I would not let her play with it.' Or you 
say: T want to beg pardon; I lost my temper, and I scratched 
the nursery-maid.' Well then, you will be told : 'Indeed, you have 
been a naughty child.' In future you are expected to give up 
being naughty. You feel that this is right and fair, that you 
should be blamed. You are honestly sorry, and you are forgiven. 

Now comes the other thing, not speaking the truth. The child 
says : Tt was not I who spilt the ink. It was some one else who 
spoiled the tablecloth.' And the child knows that it was not some 
one else, but he himself. Now this is what is so wicked ; you have 
no idea how horrid it makes one feel. The child becomes afraid 
of looking up, and will be found out all the same. The child who 
spoke the untruth has to be punished; it hid away a nasty dirty 
thing which soiled its clean and cheerful heart. An untruth makes 
your heart as ugly as dirt makes your face. Let us take a 
walk into a lovely garden. Do look at all these happy children 
playing about, how they are enjoying themselves. Their hearts 
are clean and healthy, and that is why they are having such a 
good time. What a pity then it would be to spoil everything. 

But such is surely the case as soon as we forget what we have 
been told, if we are disobedient, if we do wrong. |You have been 
told not to pluck the flowers from mother's favourite bed in the 
garden, the lovely pink and white and yellow roses. Now you and 
your conscience — ^because you cannot leave your conscience be- 
hind if you tried — see the roses, bathed in the bright sunshine. 
Your fingers itch. You think : 'I want them.' 'No,' says your 
conscience, 'no, you have been forbidden to pluck them.' Had you 
listened to your conscience, 3^ou would have remained a happy 
girlie. 

What do you do? You forget your promise. You stoop. All 
people have to stoop when they do wrong, instead of remaining 
upright as God has made us. You stoop down, break a poor stem 



xviii FOREWORD TO CHILDREN 

in two. You gather the roses. You prick your fingers. That 
hurts; but your conscience hurts a great deal more. You hold 
the flowers in your hand tightly. You see the gardener coming. 
You know that he is going to scold you. You run away. Why?* 
Because your conscience makes you feel naughty and afraid. You 
did not want the gardener to see the flowers. You fling them 
away on the ground, into a bush, in order to hide them. How 
cruel! They hate to lie withering on the ground. They love the 
sunshine. They have been plucked off by a naughty child, and 
lie fading and dying. They can no more drink the dewdrops, or 
invite the bees to look for honey. All their joy is over, and why? 
Because of a naughty, disobedient child, who is feeling unhappy 
too, and a great deal more so than they. 

You have done wrong. You have broken your word. You wish 
to forget all, but you find you cannot. You have trouble written 
on your face. Your father came into the garden and said to you, 
'Why do you look so miserable?' You thought nobody knew 
about your wrong-doing. You answered, T don't know.' You 
told an untruth. 

Do you remember what we have been talking about? Who it 
is that sees us all the time? Tell me. You have not forgotten? 
God had seen you. He had seen a little child. You had not been 
alone. God is always the same, always present. He had seen 
everything, and you were most unhappy. You confessed your 
fault, and God forgave you. The Lord sees us by day and by night. 
When it is light and when it is dark. When we are awake, when 
we are asleep. He never leaves us, but takes care of us always. 
This is a most beautiful and comforting feeling; always to feel 
we have our loving Heavenly Father with us. He gives us 
courage and hope and help. Never can we give Him thanks 
half enough. We must never forget Him. We must ever re- 
member His goodness to us, and praise Him. 

When you are a school boy or school girl, your teachers will 
give you marks for your work. This means they will put under- 
neath your exercise in your copybooks in red ink, 'Very good,' 
if they know that you have tried your hardest. Then you are so 
happy. You run and show it to your father and mother, and you 
make them so happy too. A brave sailor who weathers the storm 
and the perils of the sea, wears a good-conduct badge on his 
sleeve. He has been praised by his captain, who said, 'Well 
done.' Then he is a happy man. 

Thus are we all happy, just in so far as we try our hardest to 
do our best. If we try to live good, honest, upright, truthful lives, 



FOREWORD TO CHILDREN xix 

then the Lord will some day say to us, 'Well done, good and faith- 
ful servant.' He says to you His children, 'Come to me.' When 
that time comes, then He will enable us to see Him, That will 
be the very best of all things that can possibly happen to us. To 
be near Him, with Him, and never to leave Him. He has promised 
us this. Jesus Christ, His Son, our Saviour, is the proof. Let 
us serve God all the days of our life. Let us love Him as we 
ought. He is the Truth, and He is our Father. 

FREDA DE KNOOP. 



CONTENTS 

THE OLD TESTAMENT 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Genesis I. — IV. (The Creation Narratives) ... i 
II Genesis IV.— XII. (Narratives of the Early Tra- 
dition) , . . . 14 

III Genesis XII.— XXXVIL (TJie History of the Patri- 

. archs) . . . ':^ "",""''.' 26 

. ly /Genesis XXXVII. to ExO(ius XV. 22 (The History 
'' . .r';\ of the Patriarchs — Moses and the Story of the 

Exodus) 40 

V Exodus XV. 22— Leviticus^ — Numbers— Deuteronomy 

—Joshua XXIV. 28 (Moses and Joshua) ... 56 

VI Judges— Ruth ^ , . . . 76 

VII I Samuel ( Saul— Davidy^^i;^!^ ;\ j;_V' ^^^ -''.^ - - 86 
VIII 2 Samuel (David) . . '. V '. .^ ^' . ." : . . 102 
IX I Kings (Solomon— Division of the Kingdom — Elijah 

Vr, — Ahab) Ill 

X 2 Kings — I and 2 Chronicles — Ezra — Nehemiah — 

Esther 131 

XI The Book of Job 153 

XII Psalms — Proverbs — Ecclesiastes — The Song of Songs 160 

XHI Isaiah 171 

XIV Jeremiah — Lamentations 185 

XV Ezekiel ...,.,... 194 

XVI Daniel . . . .,,,r * . . , 200 

XVII Rosea — Joel — Amos — Obadiah — Jonah — Micah — 
Nahum' — H'abakkuk — Zephaniah — Haggai — 
Zechariah — Malachi 209 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 

XVIII The Origin arid Canon of the Scriptures — The 

Manuscripts — The Versions — Our English Bible 

— Interval Between the Old Testament and the 

New — The Preparation for Christ's Coming — 

xxi 



CHAPTER 



XIX 
XX 

XXI 



XXII 



XXIII 



XXIV 



XXV 



XXVI 



XXVII 



XXVIII 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Situation in Palestine — The Synoptics — The 
Fourth Gospel 2^2) 

The Gospels (The Annunciation and the Nativity) 257 

The Gospels (Jesus at Bethlehem — At Jerusalem — 
At Nazareth) 269 

The Gospels (The Silent Years of Preparation — 
The Baptism — The Temptation — The Founding of 
the Church of Christ) 288 

The Gospels (Jesus at Nazareth — At Cana — At 
Capernaum — At Jerusalem — With Nicodemus — At 
Sychar — A Woman of Samaria) 303 

The Gospels (Jesus and the Problem of the Sab- 
bath Day — The Preaching at Nazareth — At Jeru- 
salem — The Return to Galilee — Miracles of Heal- 
ing at Capernaum — The Call of St. Matthew) . 313 

The Gospels (the Sermon on the Mount — The 
Raising of the Widow's Son at Nain — The For- 
giveness of the Woman Who was a Sinner — The 
Woman with the Issue of Blood — The Raising 
of Jairus' Daughter) 326 

The Gospels (The Sending Forth of the Twelve 
Apostles — The Feeding of the Five Thousand — 
Miracles on the Lake — Walking on the Water 
— The Journey Through Phcenicia — The Confes- 
sion of Peter, the Rock Foundation of the Church 
— The Transfiguration) 340 

The Gospels (From Galilee to Jerusalem — The 
Home at Bethany — The Feast of Tabernacles — 
First Teaching in the Temple — ^Tlie Ministry in 
Persea — The Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem 
— Return to Peraea — Visit to Bethany to Raise 
Lazarus from' the Dead — Withdrawal to Ephraim) 354 

The Gospels (the Last Journey to Jerusalem — At 
Jericho — Zacchseus — The Home at Bethany — The 
Messianic Entry into Jerusalem — The Teaching in 
the Temple) 371 

The Gospels (The Sadducee Plot and the Pharisees 
— The Treachery of Judas — The Institution of the 
Lord's Supper — Gethsemane — The Trial Before 
the Sanhedrin — The Trial Before Pilate — The 
Crucifixion and Death) 396 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIX The Gospels (The Burial— The Resurrection— The 
Appearances of the First Easter Day — The Ap- 
pearances of the Forty Days — ^The Ascension) . 417 
XXX The Acts of the Apostles (The Ascension— Pente- 
cost — The Sanhedrin — Stephen — Philipi — The Con- 
version of Saul — Cornelius — Paul and Barnabas — 
The First Missionary Journey — ^Council at Jeru- 
salem — Second Missionary Journey) .... 429 

XXXI The Acts of the Apostles (Third Missionary Jour- 
ney — Jerusalem — Riot — Arrest by Romans — 
Cassarea^ — Felix — Festus — King Agrippa — Appeal 
to Csesar — Shipwreck at Malta — First Imprison- 
ment — Last Missionary Journey — Last Imprison- 
ment — Martyrdom) 448 

XXXII St. Paul's Epistles Grouped Chronologically — The 
Epistle to the Hebrews — The Seven Catholic 
Epistles — James — I. and II. Peter — L, II., and 

III. John — Jude 460 

XXXIII The Revelation of St. John the Divine 482 



'ALL HAIL.'* 

SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Genesis i.-iv. (The Creation Narratives). 

God, who gives all good things, has given us the best of books, 
or rather the best library of sacred books, the Book of books, 
the Bible. The Bible falls naturally into two great divisions, the 
Old Testament and the New Testament, which really ought to be 
written in accordance with the meaning of the original word, 
the Old Covenaiit and the New. The Old Testament consists of 
thirty-nine books in the English Version, though of only twenty- 
four in the Hebrew, the number of books being reduced by group- 
ing several books and counting them as one book. The books in 
the Hebrew Bible are further grouped into three main divisions : 
(i) The Law. (2) Tlie Priophets. (3) The Holy Writings. 
The Law includes the Five Books (the Pentateuch). The Pro- 
phets consist of the 'Former Prophets,' or historical books : Joshua, 
Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the 'Latter Prophets,' or prophets 
in the ordinary sense of the word. The Holy Writings comprise 
the great poetical books, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, the five Rolls 
— Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther — with Daniel, 
Ezra, Nehemiah, i and 2 Chronicles. The arrangement in our 
English Bible is known to all, and need not be repeated. It is 
derived ultimately from the Septuagint, the earliest version made 
in Greek for Greek-speaking Alexandrian Jews under Ptolemy 
II., from which it passed into the Vulgate and other versions. 

The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books, which, ar- 
range themselves naturally in the following groups: (i) The 
Gospels. (2) The Acts of the Apostles. (3) The Epistles of St. 
Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews. (4) The Catholic or Gen- 
eral Epistles. (5) The Book of the Revelation. Neither in the 

*And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met thern, 
saying "All hail'" (Matt, xxviii. 9). 



2 * ALL HAIL ' 

New or in the Old Testament is the arrangement of the books 
in exact chronological order. 

The language of the Old Testament is for the most part Hebrew, 
one of the Semitic family of languages. The portions that are 
not in Hebrew are in Aramaic or Syrian, and are to be found in 
Ezra iv. 8 to vi. i8. vii. 12-26. Jeremiah x. 11, Daniel ii. 4 to the 
end of vii. 

The language of the New Testament is Greek, with a few words 
of Aramaic, but it is the Greek used by the Hellenists or Jews 
of the Dispersion. This Greek has, manifestly, been subjected to 
the powerful influence of the Septuagint or Greek version of the 
Old Testament. 

The Old Testament is the history of the covenant between Je- 
hovah and the Jewish nation. The New Testament records the 
establishment of the new covenant in Jesus Christ, and is the same 
covenant predicted by the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah xxxi. verse 
2,3 : 'After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my lav/ in their 
inv/ard parts, and v/rite it in their hearts ; and will be their God, 
and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every 
man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the 
Lord : for they shall all know me. from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, 
and I v/ill remember their sin no more.' 

What distinguishes the Bible, the Old Testament as well as the 
New Testament, from the sacred books of other religions is the 
immense superiority of its contents. It contains, and has alwa3'^s been 
held to contain, a Divine Revelation and a Divine Inspiration which 
are absolutely unique. The Revelation is the self-unveiling by which 
God makes known His will. His mind. His purposes to man. The 
Revelation is gradual and goes on continuously. God reveals Him- 
self in many v/ays, in the workings of His moral law, in the experi- 
ence of the individual and in the experience of the community, in the 
control He m.anifestly exercises over the history of mankind, in na- 
ture, and above all, in the one complete and perfect Revelation, in 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Everywhere and always God has been and 
is revealing Himself to man, but this self-revelation, while open to 
all, is observed by few. 

God's revelation of Himself has been, and is, made in human 
experience; but all men cannot read clearly the Revelation of 
God in their own experience, or in the experience of others, and 
so God's Revelation of Himself has always needed interpreters. 
Inspiration is the gift of God to man by which the interpretation 
of Revelation becomes possible. It is specially concerned with the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 3 

part God has in human experience. Inspiration might be ^ de- 
scribed as the spirit of God intensifying man's powers of spiritual 
vision. Or again, it might be described as an intense consciousness 
of God which sees Him as the chief factor in all our manifold 
life. But all definitions of Inspiration are unsatisfactory. To at- 
tempt it is like attempting a definition of God Himself. It is too 
wide and deep and mysterious for human words. It can be felt 
but it cannot be described, since it is the in-breathing of God Himself 
into the human soul. As our Risen Lord breathed on His disciples 
when He said, Take ye the Holy Ghost,' so Jehovah breathed into 
the Old Testament prophets the spirit of power which we call 
Inspiration. A book is inspired in which this in-breathed spirit of 
God moves the consciousness of man. It is in this sense that the 
Bible is inspired. It is alive with the presence of God, and breathes 
the influence of His Holy Spirit. Indeed, it may be safely said 
that the real presence of God in the Old Testament as well as in the 
New constitutes the main characteristic which distinguishes the 
Bible from the sacred books of other religions. This is a fact 
amply evidenced by the experience of vast numbers of serious read- 
ers of the Bible in past centuries and at the present time throughout 
the world. The prophets of the Old Testament are perhaps the 
most notable examples of the continuit}^ as well as the strength of 
Biblical inspiration. They asserted that God spoke to them directly 
to their minds and in their minds, and that they felt this Inspira- 
tion as a compelling force. This is the recorded experience of 
Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Jeremiah (i. 9) testifies : 
'Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And 
the Lord said unto me. Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.' 
Amos says (iii. 7) : 'Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he 
revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath 
roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but 
prophesy?' Though he had an inspired vision into the future, the 
Old Testament prophet was chiefly concerned with the interpreta- 
tion of the events of the present. He was, before all things, a 
speaker for God, a forth-teller even more than a fore-teller. In- 
spiration, however, in the Old Testament is by no means confined 
to the prophets, as we shall see at once in concrete example, when 
we turn to the first chapters of the book of Genesis, the first book 
of the Bible. 

A word more before we begin the first book of the Bible. If we 
read the Bible reverently and attentively, we shall find it far more 
interesting, as well as far more valuable, and in the deepest 
sense far more true, than any other book in the world. The Bible 



4 * ALL H'AIL ' 

is the truest of all books. It is full of the highest truth — the knowl- 
edge of God and of His dealings with men. The difference be- 
tween the Old Testament, which is the history of a nation written 
during many centuries by many hands, and the histories of. other 
nations, is brifly this. While the histories of other nations deal with 
their earthly and temporary prosperity or adversity, the Old 
Testament, the history of the Israelites, deals with the relations 
of the Israelites to God. The standpoint is quite different from' 
that of Greek or Roman history, or even from that of English 
history. The writers see God's Hand in everything, and God's 
dealings, whether with individuals or with the nations, are to them 
of absorbing interest and importance. Everything is illumined by 
the light of the vision of God. And so the most ordinary events 
take a new significance from their connection with the undeviating 
purpose of the Unseen Lord of nature and man, whose Presence 
is to be perceived alike in the individual soul and in all the varied 
movements of national and nature's life. Let us study the Bible 
thoughtfully and prayerfully as full of the true wisdom' of life. 

We v/ill now look at some Italian pictures, and at the same time 
v;e will take the Bible and read what it has to tell us about many 
wondrous things. And first about the Creation : which means the 
shaping of a higher order out of a lower. This God does by de- 
grees progressiveh', in wondrous ways whicli are beyond our 
understanding. 

Tn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' (Gen- 
esis i. I.) 

These are the first words in the Bible, and they record the great 
Foundation Miracle out of which God's wonderful Revelation of 
Himself was by degrees to be given. This miracle of Creation is 
the Foundation Fact of Religion. Thus a miraculous element has 
been from the first attached to Religion which is rooted in mystery. 

The opening words of the Bible — the first words of the Book of 
Genesis — say : Tn the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness 
v^'as upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved 
upon' (rather 'was brooding upon,' i.e.. like a bird upon its nest, to 
fit the waters to generate life) 'the face of the waters. And God 
said, Let there be light; and there was light.' 

'And God saw the light that it was good' (God's approval of 
creation is declared seven times in this chapter) ; 'and God divided 
the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and 
the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning 
v/ere the first day' (rather to be translated, 'and evening came and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 5 

morning came, one day/ Observe the da)^ begins with the evening, 
in accordance with the Jewish point of viev/, which began the day 
at sunset.) 'And God said. Let there be a firmament in the midst 
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And 
God made the firmament, and divided the waters v/hich were under 
the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; 
and it was so. And God called the firmamient Heaven. And the 
evening and the morning were the second d2Ly. And God said, 
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one 
place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. x^nd God called 
the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called 
he Seas ; and God saw that it was good.' 

You know very well, my readers, when you are at the seaside, 
that the ocean always remains in its own appointed place. There 
is a high tide, and there is a lovv^ tide ; but both come and go at 
regular intervals. The house you live in is on dry land. God con- 
trols all by Llis laws, and He takes care that the sea does not 
overstep its boundary. Let us look at this picture, painted by a 
painter called Botticelli, whom you Vv'ill love v/hen you go to Italy, 
ond when you see for 3^ourself all the wonderful things he has put 
on canvas. Fler-e we see the seaside and the children digging in 
the sands. V/ho do you think this Child is in this picture ? It 
is our beloved Lord, w^ho was once a Sinless Child on earth. Fie 
is teaching us a lesson. The man you see standing near H'im is 
St. Augustine. He was a very learned man, but he was not so 
learned as not to be taught something nev/ at the hands of Christ. 

In Mrs. Jameson's book, Sacred and Legendary Art, in vol. i., 
page 312, it says: — 'While' (St. Augustine) 'was busied in writing 
his Discourse on the Trinity, he wandered along the seashore lost 
in meditation. Suddenly he beheld a child, who, having dug a 
hole in the sand, appeared to be bringing vv^ater from the sea to 
fill it. Augustine inquired what was the object of his task? Lie 
replied, that he intended to empty into this cavity all the waters of 
the great deep. "Impossible!" exclaimed Augustine. "Not more 
impossible," replied the child, "than for thee, O Augustine ! to 
explain the mystery on which thou art now meditating." Teaching 
us, at one and the same time, two important Christian lessons, 
namely, one of Humility, the other of Faith.' 

We will give this a thought the next time we see the rolling 
ocean. Everything in this beautiful world ought to remind us of 
God. The difficulty is that we so often forget Him. After making 
the world, God, according to this inspired Creation story, proceeded 
to create all that is in it. Again we turn to our Bible. 



6 ' ALL HAIL ' 

'And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb' (larger 
vegetation, cereals, and vegetables) 'yielding seed, and the fruit 
tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon 
the earth : and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and 
the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, 
whose seed was in itself, after his kind, and God saw that it was 
good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.' 

'And God said.' The thought of man is seen in what he makes, 
and so is the thought of God. 'God said' is the very life of God, 
making itself visible for us to see. What was it that ^God said' in 
that dim morning of Creation when the earth stretched a bare and 
barren waste, unclothed as yet by vegetation? The thought of 
God took visible shape, and became grass and herb and fruit-bear- 
ing tree, so that all vegetation is seen to be the word or words of 
God, the thought of God expressed in visible shape. Grass and 
corn and the rest of vegetation, if we view them rightly, are words 
of God to us, our Father's speech to us, His children, for evermore. 

Thus this beautiful Creation narrative in the Bible teaches us to 
love and reverence all nature, to look upon the earth as a glorious 
place which God saw to be very good when His creative work was 
done. God's approval surely referred not only to the utility of the 
vegetable world He had created, but to the beauty also. Note, 'the 
herb yielding seed after his kind,' which brings before us the 
marvels of seed-bearing. And truly in every seed there is one of 
the greatest wonders in the world, the unseen power which no mi- 
croscope can show forth and no scales, however delicate, can weigh, 
which shows itself as what we call life alike in the smallest plant 
and the largest animal. All life on the earth is a wonder or 
miracle. We cannot tell what it is or whence it came till we turn 
to the Bible for guidance, and learn that this power comes from 
God, the Creator of the world and all that is in it. 

'And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the 
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, 
and for seasons, and for days, and years : and let them be for 
lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth : 
and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light 
to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the 
stars also. And God set them' in the firmament of the heaven to 
give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the 
night, and to divide the light from the darkness : and God saw 
that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the 
fourth day.' 

Here it may be observed that the whole of this matchless and 
majestic account of creation is written by a great religious mind 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 1 

from a purely religious point of view. From the religious pornt 
of view it is enough to know that the heavenly bodies are of God's 
making, and shovr forth His wisdom and power. 

The Creation story goes on and tells of the peopling of the waters 
with living beings. 'And God said, Let the waters bring forth 
abundantly the moving creature that hath life' (a better transla- 
tion is 'Let the waters swarm with swarming things, even living 
souls'), 'and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firma- 
ment of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living 
creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, 
after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind : and God 
sav/ that it was good. And God blessed them, sa:nng. Be fruitful 
and multipl}^ and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in 
the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.' 

'And God blessed them' {i.e., the living creatures or animals). 
The customary mark of divine approval became, in the case of these 
animate beings, a blessing. God loves His anim^als. He wishes 
them well. He wishes them to be happy animals, therefore He 
wishes us also to love them, and treat them kindly. We are never 
meant to ill-treat any animal, great or small. We are never to 
be cruel to them. We are not to ill-use them nor to beat them, 
not to injure them in any way. We are not even to pull off a fly's 
wing. All anim.als are God's creatures, and we have a duty towards 
them. 'The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
manifestation of the sons of God' (Romans viii. 19), i.e., waits for 
men to show themselves children of the God of Love, the Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at our beloved Lord in His baby- 
hood in this picture. He is holding the little bird in His ov/n hand, 
caressing it. He is, though but a child, teaching all of us. We 
must follow His example. 

In the next picture we see a very good Christian called St. 
Francis, who once lived at Assisi in Italy, standing among his 
feathered friends. He thought little about himself. He lived for 
others. He had learnt God's lesson well. He loved all things both 
small and great, because the good Lord had taught him that He 
loves them too. Here we see him giving away all his bread. As 
the poet says : 

'Sweet Saint Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again. 
He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers 
Sisters, brothers — and the beasts— whose pains are hardly less than 
ours !' 

This opening part of the Bible is an inspired picture-story or vis- 



8 ' ALL HAIL ' 

ion of Creation ; not intended as a scientific history of it. It reflects 
the mind of a great inspired poet, not of a modern man of science, 
for modern science did not then exist. 

The value of the picture is that it teaches us that everything is 
God's making, that behind everything in the world is the Supreme 
Spirit who made it, sustains it, and rules it, whom we call God. 

There remained still in God's mind a last and most wonderful 
thought, which was to find expression in the crowning work of crea- 
tion. This last and most beautiful of the Divine thoughts, the crea- 
tion of man, is described by the inspired writer with due solemnity. 
It is only after deep deliberation that God enters on the final work 
of creative thought. 

'And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.* 
The plural 'us' in God's words is noticeable, and different explana- 
tions have been given. It may be what has been called a plural 
of majesty. It may be an anticipation of the doctrine of the Holy 
Trinity, though this is less probable. It may be a relic of some 
older form of the Creation story. It may be that the Jewish in- 
terpretation is right, and that God is represented as consulting with 
His celestial court before creating the highest of His works. What 
does 'in our image, after our likeness' mean ? It means that our 
likeness to God is in our spiritual and mental nature, obviously 
not in our body. It is the possession by man of the power of self- 
conscious reason, with the power of free-will, and the power of con- 
versing with and entering into an intimate friendship with God. 
In this spiritual nearness of man to God is to be found the pos- 
sibility of God being revealed in man, as He was long afterwards 
in our Lord Jesus Christ, when the Word was made flesh and 
dwelt among us.' In virtue of his likeness to God, man was given 
a unique lordship over all living beings on the earth, to be to them, 
as far as possible, what the God of mercy and love is to H'is human 
children. 

The Creation story goes on (Genesis, chapter i., verse 26) : 'And 
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over 
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male 
and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God 
said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, 

and subdue it and God said. Behold, I have given 

you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, 
and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to 
you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 9 

every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the 
earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat : 
and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, 
behold it was very good. And the evenng and the morning were 
the sixth day.' 

The writer of this first Creation story represents God as intend- 
ing man to live solely on vegetable food, animal food being only 
obtainable at the cost of animal life. With this ideal picture of 
the happy relations of man and the animal world may be contrasted 
the later permission to Noah to use animal food (Genesis ix. 2-3). 
Genesis, chapter ii. begins : Thus the heavens and the earth were 
finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God 
ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh 
day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the 
seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from' 
all his work which God created and made.' 

This passage, which is manifestly the end of the first Creation 
story, illustrates the awkwardness and arbitrariness of the modern 
division of the Bible into chapters, for not only do these first 
verses of the second chapter belong to the first story, but in the 
fourth verse begins the second and independent story of the Crea- 
tion and man's beginning on the earth. The account of the seventh 
day closes the first Creation story. God's rest from His work on 
the seventh day is referred to, in the book of Exodus, as a reason 
for keeping the Sabbath. The fact that the Babylonians had a 
somewhat similar observance on certain days of the month suggests 
the thought that Abraham may have brought the custom from 
beyond the Euphrates when he left his Babylonian home for 
Canaan. The Hebrews, however, differed from the Babylonians 
in the intense religious earnestness with which their observance 
of the Sabbath was inspired. Moreover, the Babylonian custom 
was associated with the changes of the moon, the Hebrew was 
independent of them. The old Creation picture of the Creator 
resting on the seventh day inclines us to rest one day likewise, 
but our day is the Lord's Day, so called from the Risen Lord, the 
first day of the week. As regards the six days of Creation, Bishop 
Ryle of Winchester, in his Early Narratives of Genesis, takes the 
days as literal days, observing that the Divine Revelation gives us 
instruction on things spiritual, not on things of natural science. 
One might add it would be as reasonable to look for accurate 
science in an ancient and inspired religious epic as it would be to 
look for religious poetry in a modern manual of physical science. 
The religious inspiration of the first account of the Creation which 



10 ' ALL HAIL ' 

we have been considering is deep and true. The primitive He- 
brew tradition,' says Bishop Ryle, 'was made through the Divine 
Spirit, the first step in the stairway of Divine Revelation.' 

The second Creation story may be called the story of Paradise 
and the Fall. The compiler of Genesis,' to quote again from 
Bishop Ryle, 'selects from two recognised Hebrew traditions par- 
allel extracts descriptive of the work of Creation,' and any one who 
reads the accounts carefully even in English will recognise the 
difiference of the authorship and the point of view. It is enough 
to say that the name given to the Creator is different in the two 
accounts, and so is the point of time at which man is created. He 
is created last in the first Creation story and created first in the 
second. 

After a few preliminary words the second Creation story goes 
on thus (Genesis, ii. 7) : 'And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life ; and man became a living soul.' That the spirit of man comes 
direct from God is the great truth revealed by the inspired words 
of this old Creation story. Man had a spirit given him, part of 
God's own spirit, inbreathed by God Himself. This is why men are 
God's children. Life is nothing less than the breath of God Him- 
self; that is what this ancient writer was inspired by God to teach 
us. Life is a sacred thing, and it is high treason against God to 
misuse it. Again, in beginning the new Creation, our Lord breathed 
on His disciples and said, 'Take ye the Holy Spirit,' the breath of 
God as revealed in Christ. 

Genesis ii. verse 8, goes on : 'And the Lord God planted a garden 
eastward in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food ; the tree of life also 
in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden.' 

'And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of 
Eden, to dress it and to keep it.' This is the primeval charter of 
work. God's purpose for man's life is work, and our duty is to 
work to make this earth the garden of God. 

'And the Lord God commanded the man. saying. Of every tree 
of the garden thou mayest freely eat : but of the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that 
thou eastest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God said, 
It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will make him an 
help meet for him' (rather, 'corresponding to him'). 'And out of 
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE n 

fowl of the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would 
call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that 
was the name thereof.' The Hebrew *adam' simply means 'man.' 
The R.V. generally gives this rendering. The A.V. arbitrarily makes 
this word a proper name in chapters ii.-iv. The Hebrew 'adamah,' 
the ground, is in form the feminine of 'man' — 'adam' — and so man 
seemed to the Hebrews naturally connected with the grou^id and 
intended to work it. 

In the accompanying picture Adam is calling all the animals in a 
procession. After this, the Creation Story tells us, the Lord God 
caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and, while he lay there 
unconscious, took one of his ribs and made a woman, the equal 
help spoken of: the rib origin being a beautiful allegory of the 
essential oneness of woman and man. 

When the man awoke, the Lord God brought the woman to him, 
and he exclaimed in joyful surprise (Genesis ii. 23) : 'This is now 
bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called 
Woman' (Hebrew, ishsha), 'because she was taken out of Man' 
(Hebrew, isk). 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his 
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh.' 
Our Lord uses this passage to establish the true ideal of marriage 
as an indissoluble union (Matthew xix. verse 5). 

And now we have come to the third chapter of Genesis, which 
records the ancient and wonderfully inspired account of the Fall. 
It is, like the rest of the Creation narratives, to be taken sym- 
bolically, not literally. The man and the woman represent the 
human race. The temptation and fall of man and his expulsion 
from Paradise are described with an insight into human nature and 
a preception of the problem of evil and the mysterious reality of 
man's relationship to God which, already in this third chapter of 
Genesis, show us, in concrete example, what Biblical inspiration is. 
The mirror, held up by the story, reflects the likeness to God in 
man, by which man is able to hold converse with God, and reflects 
also the mystery of the misuse of freewill, by which man comes 
under temptation by the power of evil and surrenders to the temp- 
tation. 

The third chapter begins thus : 'Now the serpent was more subtil 
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he 
said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every 
tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We 
may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden : but of the fruit of 
the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye 
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the 



12 'ALL HAIL' 

serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die : for God 
doth know that in the day 5^e eat thereof, then your eyes shall be 
opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when 
the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was 
pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, 
she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her 
husband with her ; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both 
were opened, and they knew that they were naked ; and they 
sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.' (Gen. 
iii. 1-7.) 

The man and the woman have been already before us, but in 
this passage a new personage enters on the scene, the serpent. 
Looking at our picture we see on the left the serpent sitting up. 
If the man or the woman were to be tempted, there was no one 
in the Garden to tempt them save the animals, and simply as one 
of the animals the serpent is represented as tempting woman. To 
the Eastern mind the serpent seemed and seems an incarnation of 
cunning and poisonous malevolence. 

It is the inspired writer's own opinion that is expressed in the 
words : 'Now the serpent w^as more subtil than any beast of the 
field,' &c. The cunning, the wiliness, the craftiness of the serpent 
and the way he steals silently to the attack are, with the deadliness 
of his venomed bite, the basis of his evil reputation, and fit him to 
represent in this story of Paradise and the Fall the mysterious 
power of evil of which he is the suitable sj'mbol. He is not, 
however, here identified with the Evil one, and indeed, the evil 
being w^e call Satan is not mentioned in the Old Testament till a 
much later period. The artfulness with which the serpent insin- 
uates doubts and suspicions as to God's truth and love in the un- 
suspecting w^oman quickly results in her surrender to the tempta- 
tion, and the attraction of the tree and its fruit complete the vic- 
tory of evil. Evil is thus represented as coming from without 
the heart of man. It does not originate in man's nature, and its 
possession of his heart is only temporary till it is expelled by 
Him who made man in His own image. Both the woman and the 
man had now eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are represented 
as passing in a moment from the innocence of childhood into the 
knowledge of grown-up years. 

In the right-hand corner of our picture we see Adam and Eve 
stitching together fig-leaves, and making aprons, or more properly 
girdles, of them. Fig-leaves are chosen to clothe their nakedness 
probably because of the large size of the leaves ; and here it may be 
observed that the mention of figs shows that the narrative cannot 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 13 

have been taken direct from a Babylonian source, for while the fig 
grew wild in Palestine and Syria, it was not to be found in Baby- 
lonia. 

In Genesis iii. verse 8, we read: 'And they heard the voice' 
(rather, sound) 'of the Lord God walking in the garden in the 
cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the 
presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And 
the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art 
thou? And he said. I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was 
afraid, because I was naked ; and I hid myself. And he said. Who 
told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, 
vrhereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the 
man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave 
me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the 
woman. What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said. 
The serpent beguiled mie, and I did eat. And the Lord God said 
unto the serpent. Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed 
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly 
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life : 
and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt 
bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply 
thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth 
children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall 
rule over thee. And unto Adam he said. Because thou hast heark- 
er.ed unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which 
I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it : cursed is the 
ground for thy sake; in sorrov/ shalt thou eat of it all the days of 
thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and 
thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; in the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it 
v/ast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou 
return. And Adam, called his wife's nam.e Eve ; because she w^as 
the mother of all living. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the 
Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.' Eve means Liv- 
ing, or Life. 

Thus v/e read that the Lord God came as Judge to guilty man 
in the Garden, and pressed for the full confession, which man 
characteristically endeavoured to avoid, casting the blame on the 
wom.an, as she. in her turn, on the serpent; and the Lord God 
passed sentences on all the giailty three, and first upon the serpent, 
v.'ho had suggested the evil thoughts that resulted in man's fall. 
The n:ark of the serpent's sentence, as cursed above other animals, 



14 ' ALL HAIL ' 

is that it is to crawl upon its belly in the dust, and its very food 
is to be dusty. There is to be bitter enmity between the serpent 
race and the race of men," which as an actual fact has become al- 
most an instinct on the side of man. Here we have come to what 
is known as the Protevangelium : 'And I will put enmity between 
thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' This is a sym- 
bolic account of the perpetual conflict between man and evil. In 
such a conflict with the power of evil carried on by God's appoint- 
ment, in which that power of evil is symbolised by the serpent, 
the ultimate result will be the triumph of man. But it is in Christ 
alone, as the representative man, and in union with Him that this 
victory can be obtained. This is the Protevangelium, the first an- 
nouncement of the good news of the final victory over evil, which, 
thanks to Christ, awaits the human race. So far the sentence is on 
the serpent. The sentence on the woman is pain, especially in child- 
bearing, and troubles proceeding from her relationship to her hus- 
band. The sentence has been profoundly verified by the general 
experience of after centuries. The operation of sin in the world 
has caused immeasurable suffering to women. The sentence on the 
man follows. His lot is to be not merely work, but toil embittered 
by sin and discontent. After this sentence there is a moving pas- 
sage revealing God's unchanged sympathy for guilty man. Man 
had made himself girdles of fig-leaves. God, approving, supplied 
him' with a more substantial covering of skins. Then follows the ex- 
pulsion from Paradise. 'So he drove out the man; and he placed 
at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and flaming sword, 
which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life' (Gene- 
sis iii. verse 24). Paradise is an ideal locality; for the Garden in 
which the Almighty walked and the serpent spoke and man after 
the Fall could not remain, the entrance of which is guarded by 
cherubims and a flaming sword, is manifestly nowhere on this 
earth. This is a symbolical expression of the fact that the Garden 
of innocence, purity, and happiness cannot be entered again of his 
own power by man on earth. But this Garden, with the tree of 
immortality in its midst, has come in the process of many centuries 
to supply us with the name of the place of peaceful happiness after 
death, 'Paradise,' meaning the garden (a Persian word signifying 
an enclosure full of trees). Paradise, the abode of the blessed 
after death, contains the tree of life. Revelation ii. verse 7 : 'To 
him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is 
in the midst of the paradise of God'; cf. also Revelation xxii. 
verse 2. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 15 

In these sacred trees in this Hebrew story of Paradise, it is 
impossible not to trace the resemblance to the sacred trees of Assyr- 
ian and Babjdonian art. though neither the Hebrew story of Para- 
dise nor that of Creation is directly derived from Assyro-Babylonian 
sources. The study of the Creation Tablets, and particularly of 
the third tablet, reveals an unmistakable connection between the 
Jewish and the Ass3To-Babylon traditions, due probably to 
their proceeding ultimately from a common source. The resem- 
blance is not only to be found in the story of the Creation and the 
story of Paradise, but also, as we shall see, in the story of the 
Flood. The original traditions were probabh^ handed down by 
the ancestors of Abraham, v/ho had himself heard them when he 
lived in Ur and Haran; but the polytheism which defaced the 
^Slesopotamian religion, and was the cause of the monotheist Abra- 
ham's departure to Canaan, has been perfectly purged away by 
the Jewish writers or compilers, and in its place we find a pure and 
lofty monotheism, the monotheism of men who breathe the very 
atmosphere of the Divine Presence. And if the first distinguish- 
ing characteristic of Israel's spiritualised version of these early 
traditions is a unique knowledge of God, the second characteristic 
is a unique knowledge of man, an insight into human psychology 
unparalleled at that early period. An excellent way for a reader 
of the Bible to gain a vivid realisation of the difference between 
Biblical inspiration and Assj-ro-Babjdonian is to compare the spirit 
that breathes through the Hebrew narratives of the Creation and 
Fall and Flood with that which is to be found in those portions of 
the Cuneiform Tablets that deal with the same subjects. 



CHAPTER IL 

GENESIS IV. — XII. (Narratives of the Early Tradition), 

The next story is also an early tradition, and grows out of the 
prehistoric stories we have been reading of the Creation and the 
Fall. It is the story of Cain and Abel, and it, too, has lessons for 
lis. Henceforth the man and the woman, who represent mankind, 
were obliged to live away from Eden, as micn have lived since, 
conscious of sin, possessing the new sense of sin and of shame, 
which awoke in the prehistoric past in the far-away time to which 
the Creation story refers. The story goes on and tells us that a 
son was born unto them, called Cain ; and a second son, called 
Abel. The latter was a keeper of sheep, while Cain was a tiller 
of the ground. Each brought to the Lord an offering or present : 
Cain the fruit of the ground ; Abel the firstlings of his flock. 

The picture of the bronze door we have before us, was thought 
of and executed by an Italian artist, called Ghiberti, who lived about 
five hundred years ago. So beautiful is this work of art, that 
Michael Angelo said the door was worthy to be one of the gates 
of Paradise. There are ten magnificent panels, each one of which 
has a scene from the Old Testament depicted on it. The panel 
in the right-hand top corner is the one that we will now examine 
in detail. 

In the left-hand corner of our picture of the door, we see a panel 
representing Cain and Abel, as little innocent children, playing about 
at their mother's knee. Sitting on the rock is Abel, minding his 
sheep, his faithful watch-dog all attention, at his side. Further 
down we find Cain, tilling the ground. At the top you see the altars 
on which each brother laid his offering. You see also the most 
terrible deed 3^ou can think of. A man deliberately killing a man, and 
that man his own brother. 

We said before that both brothers brought gifts. Both gifts 
were alike good. But the Lord had respect to Abel's, and not 
to Cain's. The reason was that God saw the state of the hearts 
of both. The difference between the two brothers was this : Cain 
oft'ered his gift only because it had to be done; he did not put his 
heart and soul into it. Cain gave unwillingly, Abel wallingly. The 
reason why Abel's offering was received with blessing rather than 

i6 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE V 

Cain's is excellently explained by the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, who leaves ns in no doubt as to the truth. Hebrews 
xi. 4: 'By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice 
than Cain.' 

Genesis iv. 5-7: 'And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance 
fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art Thou wroth? and why 
is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be 
accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And 
unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' 

The word heredity was unknown to the writer of this ancient 
narrative but the thing which it represents is well shown forth in 
the story of Cain, the sin of his parents havin.jr developed in him. 
in the form of a sullen discontent, which made him very wroth 
when his brother's offering was accepted and his own rejected. 
It is not the intrinsic value of the gift, but ' the spirit in which 
the gift is offered that constitutes its value in the sight of God. 
God sees the heart, and. He saw the sullen temper in Cain's strug- 
gling to find expression in some violent act. God's words to Cain 
Triust be differently translated or paraphrased : 'If thou doest well 
{i.e., hast a right purpose), shall there not be lifting up {i.e., of 
thy countenance) ; and if thou doest not well {i.e., hast evil, 
envious thoughts), sin coucheth at the door {i.e., like some wild 
animal), and unto thee is its desire (it is eager to spring on thee 
and overpower thee). Thou shouldest rule over it' {i.e., conquer 
and subdue the temptation before it is too strong for thee). 
These warning words, thus interpreted, let in much light on the 
psychology of sin. 

Genesis iv. 8-13: 'And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it 
came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against 
Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, 
Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my 
brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice 
of thy brother's blood crieth ujito me from the ground. And now 
art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to 
receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the 
ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugu- 
tive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. 

So Cain, disregarding God's warning voice, indulged his sullen 
temper, and in the end tempted his brother into a lonely place, 
and killed him. Then began the judicial inquiry, which we moderns 
would describe in a somewhat different way from the Hebrew nar- 
rator's. We might say, the Divine Voice, speaking through the 
conscience says to Cain, 'Where is Abel thy brother?' Cain fights 



iS * ALL HAIL ' 

ag-ainst the Voice, and denies his responsibility, but the Divine 
Voice will not be silenced. It keeps his crime before Cain's eyes, 
and passes sentence upon him. He is now cursed from, or rather 
away from, the ground — that is, the cultivated soil where he had 
worked, and he must ever for the future be seeking new resting- 
places. He must be an outcast, wandering over the face of the 
earth, which, drenched with his brother's blood, has turned against 
him. 

'And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than 
I can bear .... and it shall come to pass, that every one 
that findeth me shall slay me.' This means that Cain's guilty 
mind sees the Blood-avenger pressing hard upon his steps. God, 
in mercy, promised Cain protection from the Blood-avenger. 'And 
the Lord said unto him. Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, ven- 
5?-eance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark 
upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.' 'Sevenfold' 
means by seven of the murderer's family being slain. The sign 
appointed by God for Cain was for his protection, and must ap- 
parently have been something attached to his person. 'And Cain 
went cut from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of 
Nod, on the east of Eden' (verse i6). 'Nod' means 'wandering,' 
a vague region to the east of Eden, not geographically defined. 

The narrative of Cain is an example of the way in which sin 
gains its mastery over a man. It shows us, for instance, the crimes 
into which an unbridled temiper may lead a man, the gradual 
descent b}- Vvdiich a man goes down-hill to become a murderer, 
the need that offerings should be made with a true and high purpose 
in order that they may be accepted by God, the comforting fact 
that God cares for the guilty sinner after he has received his ap- 
pointed punishment ; these and other lessons, intended originally 
for the Hebrew nation, are now a power for the moral instruction 
of the world. The sketch of Cain is one of those little master- 
pieces of the Bible which show hnw truly, in literature, brevity 
and sim.pl icity are power. 

'And Cain knew his wife ; and she conceived, and bare Enoch : 
and he buiided a cit}'-, and called the name of the city, after the 
i-ame of his son, Enoch.' J-.rst as there was no one to slay Cain 
except his own family, and no one for him to marry except one 
of his own sisters, so there was no one except his own family to 
inhabit the city which he built. A pre-Adam.ite population is 
sometimes assumed ; but the truth. :'s. siich difjficulties are sense- 
less, for the details of these pictures are touched in with a complete 
artlessness which should disarm any but the most pedantic criticism. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 19 

A descendant of Cain, tlirough his son Enoch, was Lamech, who 
apparently introduced polygamy by marrying two wives, Adah 
and Ziilah. Adah bore Jabal, the originator of the pastoral life, and 
his brother Jiibal, the father of all such as handle the harp, or 
rather the lyre, and the pipe. Here in our picture we see him blow- 
ing his horn. The original of the picture of Jubal is carved in 
marble. It has been exposed for centuries, to the Italian sun, to 
the dust of the street, and also to winter weather. Small wondex 
that it should be somewhat worn, but it remains a masterpiece, and 
is well worth our attention and admiration. It is one of the many 
medallions, each forming a beautiful ornament, and at the same 
time all of them illustrating Bible stories on what is certainly one of 
the m.o?t perfect buildings ever made by the hand of man, namely, 
the Cathedral tower known as Campanile del duomo in Florence. 
A shepherd boy, called Giotto, had this lovely idea and carried oi:t 
and built this tower of beauty. Giotto's name has become immortal. 

Ziilah, Lamech's wife, bore Tubal-Cain, or rather Tubal of Cain, 
the forger of every cutting instrument of brass, or rather bronze, 
and iron. To Lamech is ascribed the first lyric poetry in the 
Bible, the song of^ the sword. Lamech returns brandishing his 
weapon, and boasting to his wives, as an Arab does to-da\^ of what 
he has done. He boasts that he has requited a mere wound inflicted 
on him with death. 'And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and 
Ziilah, Hear my voice ; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my 
speech : for I have slain a man to my wounding' (better, for 
wounding me), 'and a young man io my hurt' (for bruising me). 
'If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and 
sevenfold' (Genesis iv. 2S, 24). 

Lamech's confidence in his power to pay back an enemy's attack 
with interest was perhaps founded in the bronze and iron weapons 
provided by his son Tubal-Cain's invention. In the next chapter 
the writer endeavours to give a picture of the increasing popula- 
tion of the earth and also maps out the genealogy which carries 
the chosen race from Adam to Noah. In the second verse (Gene- 
sis V. 2) 'male and female created he them, and blessed them, and 
called their name Adam in the day when they were created,' we see 
that the word 'Adam' (i.e., Man) was originally intended for the 
race and not for an individual. The age ascribed to Methuselah 
(969 years) and to the other antediluvian patriarchs is, of course, 
not to be taken as literally accurate. The Israelite tradition, deal- 
ing with prehistoric personages, was in the habit of greatly length- 
ening their lives, in imitation, perhaps, of their kindred, the Baby- 
lonians, who ascribed, according to Berosus, to their ten antedil- 



20 ' ALL HAIL ' 

iivfan kings reigns of such length as completely dwarf the long lives 
of the ten antediluvian patriarchs, Xisuthros reigning 64,800 years 
and the ten kings together no less than 432,000 years. It is obvious 
that there is here no attempt to deceive, but Hebrew tradition fol- 
lows with transparent simplicity the usual course of prehistoric 
tradition. Extraordinary knowledge as well as extraordinary length 
of years were freely assigned to those who lived in the golden 
age of antediluvian man. 

The next chapter (Genesis vi.) begins with what appears to be 
a Hebrew tradition, abruptly introduced immediately before the 
story of the Flood. It tells of the union of the sons of God and 
the daughters of men, and of the giants that were apparently the 
issue of that union. Probably the passage is introduced here as 
an example of abnormal wickedness which made the Flood a neces- 
sity. 

A simple and literal rendering of the 'sons of God' as 'angels,* 
an interpretation supported by other passages of Scripture (Job. L 
6; ii. I, xxxvii, 7) will give the natural meaning of the passage. 
We might regard it, then, as a statement that angels actually mar- 
ried earthly women, but it is a truer and more reverent view, we 
think, to take the passage to be the fragment of a very early He- 
brew tradition, which accounted for the giants on the earth as 
being the offspring of the 'angels' and the 'daughters or men.' 
It is held by sonte competent scholars that this fragment in its full 
form was intended to give another account of the origin of evil, 
another version of the Fall. From these verses, at any rate, is 
derived the idea of the fall of the angels from their first estate. 

Now we come to the story of the Flood. It is a very old tra- 
dition, found in different forms in the records of different nations, 
but in its highest form in the inspired pages of Genesis. We can- 
not, so long after the event, tell exactly what took place in detail, 
but the main facts of the narrative of Genesis are supported by the 
other traditions. Allowing for what is dramatic and figurative, 
the substantial truth seems to be that there were great floods, and 
a great inundation from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, in the 
broad region between them, and that all the people were drowned 
except a few who, guided by God, escaped in a ship. When the 
inundation subsided, those in the ship found the rest of the people 
and the animals drowned. That the Flood was local and not univer- 
sal seems manifest, for, as has been well said by a great scholar, 'so 
vast an accumulation of water would be in itself an impossibility.. 
To the authors of the tradition of the Flood preserved in Genesis 
the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the region of Mesopotamia, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 21 

^vas the world, the only world they knew, and to this world the 
Flood was probably confined. 

Taken in this sense, as a tremendous local inundation, there is no 
reason to question the historic character of the event. Experience 
teaches us more and more that there is a substantial basis of truth 
at the foundation of traditions far less circumstantial and probable 
than the tradition af the flood in the Bible. It may reasonably be 
supposed that this tradition of the flood was brought by Abraham 
from his Mesopotamian home, for of late years it has become clear 
that the Assyro-Babylonian account of the deluge was not derived 
from Jewish sources, but represented an ancient Mesopotamian 
tradition, in which H'asisatra or Xisuthros occupied the place of 
Noah. The most probable explanation of the relationship of the 
Hebrew and Assyro-Babylonian traditions is that they are both 
derived from a primitive and prehistoric Semitic original. The 
Assyro-Babylonian version of the Flood story is steeped in poly- 
theism and superstition. The Hebrew version breathes the purest 
monotheism. The Flood is God's judgment on man for his gross 
disregard of the moral law, and the preservation of Noah is the 
reward of righteousness, and saves not only himself but his family. 
A careful comparison of the Hebrew and the Babylonian versions 
of the ancient story of the Flood will show again, as in the story 
of Creation and the story of Paradise and the Fall, the essential 
nature of Biblical inspiration, which is concerned with the religious 
element in experience and life. Not only in the great prophets, 
though in them chiefly, is God's inspiration to be found in the 
Bible. The God who is 'of purer eyes than to behold iniquity/ 
whose tender mercies are everlasting and over all His works, is 
seen in the first chapters of the Bible, the early narratives of Gene- 
sis, inspiring His Hebrew worshippers to shape the old traditions 
which their fathers had brought from beyond the Euphrates into 
imperishable instruments for conveying spiritual and moral truth, 
which are shown, moreover, to be one and inseparable. 

Let us turn to the account in the Bible. 

In Genesis vi. verse 5, we read: 'And God saw that the wicked- 
ness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of 
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it re- 
pented the Lord that H'e had made man on the earth, and it 
grieved Him at His Iieart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man 
whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and 
beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it 
repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the 
eyes of the Lord Noah was a just man and perfect 



22 ' ALL HAIL ' 

in his generations (i.e., among his contemporaries), and Noah 
walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and 
Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth 
was filled with violence .... and God said unto Noah, The 
end of all flesh is come before me ; for the earth is filled with 
violence through them ; and, behold, I will destroy them with the 
earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make 
in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch' (bitu- 
men). The Lord gave Noah exact particulars how he was to build 
this ark with a door, and a window, and three storeys. That may 
be taken to mean the truth that God, who gives all knowledge, gave 
to men the knowledge of shipbuilding in general, and of the build- 
ing of the ark, which was a strangely shaped ship, in particular. 

Our Book continues : 'Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of 
waters upon the earth, to destory all flesh, wherein is the breath 
of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth 
shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant.' Covenant 
means an agreement made by promise on God's part to Noah, but 
conditional on his performance of his duty to God. God says : 
'Thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, 
and thy son's wives with thee. And of every living thing of all 
flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them 
alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after 
their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of ever}^ creeping thing of 
the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee ; 
to keep them, alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is 
eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be food for 
thee and for them. Thus did Noah ; according to all that God 
commanded him, so did he.' 

For forty days and nights God caused it to rain upon the earth 
. . . . 'all the fountains of the great deep broke up, and the 
windows of heaven were opened .... the waters increased, 
nnd bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth .... 
a!;d the ark went upon the 3^ace of the waters. And the waters 
prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; and all the high hills, that 

were under the whole heaven, were covered And all 

flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, 
and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth, and every man ; all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, 
of all that was in the dry land, died Noah only re- 
mained alive, and the.v that were with him in tire ark. And the 
v^aters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. And 
God remembered Noah, iind every living thing, and all the cattle 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 23 

that was Avith him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over 
the earth, and the waters assuaged.' This means, the waters 
diminished. The waters went down ; the rain left off ; the flood 
abated; and the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat — i.e., Ar- 
menia, north of Lake Van. Observe, God not only remembered 
and preserved men but animals in the ark — an example of His 
universal care for His creatures. 

Genesis viii. verse 6: . . . . 'Noah opened the window of 
the ark which he had made; And he sent forth a raven, which 
v/ent forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the 
earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were 
abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest 
for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, 
for the waters were on the face of the whole earth ; then he put 
forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the 
ark. And he stayed yet other seven days ; and again he sent forth 
the dove out of the ark ; And the dove came in to him in the even- 
ing; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah 
knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he 
stayed yet other seven days ; and sent forth the dove ; which re- 
turned not again unto him' any more. And it came to pass in the 
six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of 
the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth : and Noah 
removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face 
of the ground was dry.' 

And God spake unto Noah, saying. Go forth of the ark, thou 
and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring 
forth with thee every living thing that is wuth thee, of all flesh, 
both of fowl and of the cattle, and of every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the 

earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth And 

Noah builded an altar unto the Lord .... and offered burnt 
oft'erings on the altar.' 

Up to now we have said nothing about the structure of the 
Flood-story in the Bible. Just as there are two accounts of the 
Creation, so there are two versions here of the story of the Flood. 
The two accounts are closely interwoven, but can be easily traced 
out. The cause of the Flood is different in the two accounts. 
In the one account the Flood is caused by rain alone, in the other 
by 'the fountains of the great deep' being broken up, as well as by 
the 'windows of heaven being opened.' A still more definite dif- 
ference is found in the duration of the Flood ; in the one account it 
is sixty-eight days, in the other it is over a year, one hundred and 



24 ' ALL HAIL ' 

fifty days of which the Flood continued to rise and increase. Yet 
it is quite evident these differences are only two versions of the one 
story, which is intimately connected with the Babylonian story of 
the Flood. 

Noah offered sacrifices with heartfelt thanksgivings to the Lord 
for his wonderful preservation. And the Lord said in His heart, 
'I will not again- curse the ground any more for man's sake 
. . . . neither will I again smite any more everything living, as 
I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, 
and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall 
not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons,' and the blessing 
was "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,' They 
v/ere to have the lordship over the animal creation. They might 
eat flesh but not with the blood, the blood being regarded as the 
seat of the life, too sacred to be eaten, but to be offered to God 
before man ate the flesh. 

Genesis ix. verse 8 : 'Behold I establish my covenant with you, 

and v.dth your seed a:?ter you And God said. This is 

the token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and 
evei*y living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations : 

T do set my bow in the cloud And it shall come to pass, 

v/hen I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen 
in the cloud : And I v/ill remember my covenant .... and 
the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh; 

Whenever we look upon the rainbow stretching out of heaven and 
reaching to earth, we ought to remember that God is keeping watch 
and fulfilling His promise. Of course, there were rainbows from 
the very beginning, long, before man was created — long before the 
Flood in Mesopotamia. But God spoke in the depth- of Noah's 
soul, and made Noah see in the rainbow a token of the covenant 
or agreement between God and man. The original means : 'I have 
set my bow in the cloud' (R.V. marg.). 

Thus the Bible account of the Flood represents it as sent by God 
for the punishment of the great wickedness of the human race. It 
is sent in judgment, it is v/ithdrawn in mercy. And so God's deal- 
ings with Noah reveal the fact that the righteous man is never 
deserted, but is delivered by liim out of all his troubles. More- 
over, the fatherly goodwill, and the gracious friendliness with 
which God regards all mankind, find an appropriate symbol in the 
rainbow, which the sun lights up in a cloudy sky when a storm' is 
passing away, reminding the devorit mind of God's returning favour 
after the storm of His just displeasure is over. It was not chiefly 
to preserve the memory of the Flood that the story of Noah was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 25 

written. Rather, the writer or writers who composed the account 
la Genesis were inspired by God to use the ancient record of the 
Flood, to stamp upon the minds of the Israelites some of the es- 
sential truths of their religion. The first of these truths is un- 
doubtedly the nature of God, Who appears in the Biblical story of 
the Flood as the One God of heaven and earth, Who punishes man 
and forgives and brings down to the ground and raises up again, 
and has always, whether He appears for judgment or for salvation, 
the purpose of love towards man whom' He made in His image, 
after H'is likeness. Contrast wnth the great dignity, the unchanging 
holiness, the abiding goodwill of the God of Noah, the pettiness, 
the petulance, the cowardice of the swarms of greedy gods whose 
disputes fill the Assyro-Babylonian version of the Flood-story. 
Contrast the pure arbitrariness, the absence of any appreciation of 
righteousness, in the attitude of the Babylonian deities towards 
man,, with the Hebrew God's attitude towards Noah, who found 
grace in His sight because he was a supremely righteous man. 
'Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generations' (among 
his contemporaries), 'and Noah walked with God' (i.e., in compan- 
ionship with God), a statement m.ade also of Enoch, of whom it is 
added that "he was not, for God took him,' which the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews interprets as recording his translation to 
heaven like Elijah, as the result of a holy life. 

Nimrod, 'a mighty hunter before God,' is described in Genesis 
X. as having Babel, that is Babylon, as his capital, and thence colon- 
ising Assyria and building Nineveh. There are various theories 
as to v4io he was. [By some students he is identified with Gil- 
gamesh, the hero of the great mythological epic which contains 
the Babylonian Flood-story. According to another theory Nimrod 
is Merodach, regarded as a mighty hunter by the Babylonians. 

The story of the Tov/er of Babel, i.e., Gate of God, is the last 
of the interesting prehistoric traditions which fill the first eleven 
chapters of the Book of Genesis. It tells of an attem.pt to build 
in the land of Shinar, i.e.. Babylonia, 'a city and a tovv^er. whose 
top may reach unto heaven.' This probably means the building 
of an unusually high ziggurat, or Babylonian temple tower. By 
some it is supposed to have been the celebrated temple tower in 
Borsippa, the ruins of which form the moui;d called Birs Nimroud ; 
by others it is identified v.'ith the famous seven-storied tower of 
Z'.lerodach, in Babylon, which Nebuchadnezzar restored. This 
tower was built in prehistoric times, and its earliest nam^e was 
Accadian, 'the house of the lofty summit.' It was the principal 
shrine in Babylon. A ziggurat, it may be explained, was a mas- 



26 ' ALL HAIL ' 

sive pyramidal tower, ascending in stage-like terraces, with a tem- 
ple at the top. The story seems to be intended to account for the 
division of men into different races and languages. As usual with 
all these Biblical prehistoric stories, the religious lesson is quite 
true. Pride and self-exaltation then, as now, brought down on 
men the condemnation of God, The impious attempt to establish 
human unity without the co-operation of the true God proved, 
according to the Hebrew reading of the old story, a complete 
failure. 

We have now finished the first eleven chapters of the book of 
Genesis, the first portion of the Bible, which occupies a place by 
itself, dealing, as it does, with the prehistoric period, and giving 
an account of the Creation of the universe, and of man's early 
history on the earth, unique in its inspiration from a religious point 
of view. As we go on with the reading of the Bible we shall find 
that the Revelation or self-unveiling of God which has already 
begun in these chapters, is a progressive Revelation of Himself 
which meets religious difficulties as they arise and supplies their 
solution. The form so far throughout this prehistoric period has 
been that of narrative, a form innately dear to the Eastern heart 
and habits of thought. 

In the great religious pictures of the Creation narrative, God 
reveals Himself through the inspired writer, as pre-existent, om- 
nipotent, a hater of sin, a lover of mankind, and in particular 
of that righteousness in mankind which is the true life of a man. 
In the same narratives man is revealed as made by God in His 
own image and likeness, and man is seen to be made a living soul, 
because of that precious thing, the life of God, breathed into him 
by the Creator. This gift of God, not only the lower power of 
physical life, but the higher power of intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual life, enables man to enter into communion with God, and 
to live in a measure God's life. All this belongs to the deep 
things of religion and is profoundly true. Then, again we read, 
in the form of a poetic word-picture, how man once innocent, 
became conscious of the moral law, and became conscious of it 
only to break it. The whole story of the Fall is remarkable not 
only for its revelation of God, but for its insight into the psy- 
chology of man. In the story of the Fall a great hope is left to 
man in the fact that God does not forsake him after the Fall, but 
to hearten him in the struggle with temptation gives him the sure 
promise of the Protevangelium, the ultimate victory over evil of 
the Vv'oman's seed in Christ. Once more the terrible power of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 2.-7 

heredity, the inherited propensity for evil, is shown in Cain, and in 
the story of the Flood. God's wrath towards sin and mercy towards 
mankind are portrayed in the experience of Noah, while the story 
of the tower of Babel shows how God regards insolent pride and 
self-seeking in man. In the whole of this first portion of Gene- 
sis. God appears as a gracious, generous, and loving Creator, and a 
just and merciful judge. 

At this point we may say a few words on the value of the 
whole book of Genesis, as indeed of the whole Old Testament, 
as a means of teaching miorality to the young, and teaching it as 
practical religion. The Eastern is the prince of story-tellers, and 
Genesis in particular and the Old Testam.ent in general teach by 
stories, the very best means for teaching children. Genesis, more- 
over, even beyond the other Old Testament books, has an at- 
mosphere of its own, the atmosphere of God, which of itself is 
invaluable as stimulating the moral and spiritual growth of the 
child. The moral teaching of the Old Testament is never dull, 
and no one takes it in more readily than the child. Childhood is 
obviously the time to learn the moral law, for the fullest good ef- 
fects of obedience to the moral law are only to be had by begin- 
lu'ng in childhood the self-mastery which is the secret of the right 
life. In the hands of competent teachers, of parents in the home, 
and masters and mistresses in the school, the Old Testament re- 
mains the very best practical handbook for the teaching of morals 
to boy or girl, and it is hoped that these simple readings and 
explanations of the Bible maj^ be a help and encouragement to 
parents, and even to school-teachers to bring home the life-giving 
contents of the Bible to the children in their charge. 

It was the Old Testament of which St. Paul wrote to Timothy 
that it v/as given by inspiration of God 'that he man of God may 
be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.' The ef- 
fect on the moral life is one of the best tests of true inspiration, 
and the Old Testament emerges triumphantly from this test, in 
tiie case of adults as well as in the case of children. The Bible 
(the New Testament, of course, but not v,-ithout the Old) is God's 
chief instrument for the education of the world in that which 
is most important, the power of the righteous life. The regular 
reading of the Bible and a practical knowledge of its contents 
have formed the character of the English-speaking race in the 
past and are needed to continue it in the future. We cannot live 
without ideals, 'but the Bible,' says Bishop V/estcott, 'not only 
ofters to us an ideal of service and sympathy and fellowship, of 
love to God and man, which answers to the noblest asoirations of 



28 ' ALL HAIL ' 

all men, but also supplies us with a motive to seek it and power 
to approach it, the sense of Christ's love for us, and the sense 
of Christ's presence.' 

We have more than once referred to the fact that in the stories 
of prehistoric times in the early chapters of Genesis there is a 
remarkable resemblance to Assyro-Babylonian traditions which 
have been found in cuneiform inscriptions and deciphered very 
successfully of late years. How is this resemblance to be ex- 
plained? 'On the assumption,' says Bishop Ryle, 'of derivation 
from an ultimately common source in the religious mythology of 
Mesopotamia. The original tradition,' he says, 'marred with the 
intricacies of a bewildering polytheism, was received from their 
Mesopotamian ancestors by the founders of the Israelite branch 
of the Semitic race.' We have accepted this view, and ascribed 
the bringing of these prehistoric stories from Mesopotamia to 
Canaan to Abraham, the historic father of the Hebrew race. 
When Abraham left Haran and crossed the Euphrates, he left 
behind him a people who, including his own kindred, worshipped 
many gods, and he himself, it is evident, was the faithful wor- 
shipper of the one God. What more natural than that Abraham's 
monotheism should begin at an early date to purify and spiritual- 
ise the popular Creation traditions of his people, though it was 
no doubt only after many centuries that the compiler gave those 
traditions their present Biblical form. In support of this view 
these words may be quoted from Joshua's last address. Joshua 
xxiv. 2: 'And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus said the Lord 
God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood 
in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father 
of Nachor ; and they served other gods. And I took your father 
Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout 
all the land of Canaan' ('the other side of the flood' is in the Re- 
vised Version, from beyond the river,' that is, the Euphrates). 

It may be added that the fact that the Hebrew traditions seem 
to have come ultimately from Mesopotamia is a strong corrobora- 
tion of the trustworthiness of the Biblical account of the origin 
of the Hebrews, which states that Abraham, in his earlier life, 
lived in that region in Ur of the Chaldees and H'aran, and came 
from that region to Canaan, and that in the marriage of his son 
Isaac, and of his grandson Jacob, a close connection was kept up 
with his Babylonian kindred, who appear to have remained poly- 
theists, to judge from the teraphim or little images which Rachel 
stole from Laban, when Jacob was returning from Haran to 
Canaan, and which Laban called 'my gods,' both Rachel and Laban 
evidently regarding them as household gods. 



CHAPTER III. 
Genesis xii. — xxxvii. (The History of the Patriarchs). 

Genesis as we have seen, and as the name signifies, is the 
book of Origins. We have had the origins of the world and of 
man pictured in poetic visions, the early narratives of which we 
have been reading, and now we are coming to the origin of the 
Hebrew race and nation. 

God is invisible to our bodily eyes, and He seeks to reveal 
Himself, His Presence, and His Nature, to our spiritual eyes. 
Without this Revelation (that is to say, unveiling) we should 
not know God. The knowledge of God is the most important 
thing in our lives, for this alone can give us true knowledge of 
ourselves as made in the image of God, and this alone can teach 
us the secret of how to live the best life here, and the best life 
here is the necessary stepping-stone to the best life hereafter. 

How does God reveal Himself to us? In many ways — through 
Nature, through History, and chiefly through the moral and 
spiritual part of man, which is moved by an inward voice. This 
our religion teaches us to recognise as the Holy Spirit. The 
crown and climax of this last Self-Revelation of God, to which 
all the other Revelations point and in which they are united and 
completed, is the Revelation God has given in Jesus Christ. 

Have you ever heard a voice in the depth of youf heart warn- 
ing you to give up what is bad, urging you to aim' at what is 
good? It is a still small voice like that which spoke to the 
prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb, and you need close attention to 
catch its accents within you, and willing obedience to what it tells 
>ou, in order that yoii may gain the power of hearing it more 
readily and more clearly. Just as God reveals Himself to you 
by this inward Voice, so He revealed Himself to the men whose 
experience of His revelation is recorded in the Bible. The dif- 
ference is that the record is written by Easterns, and very com- 
monly thrown into poetic or dramatic form. Those who heard 
the inward Voice communicated their experience to others, and 
helped others to listen to the Voice, and to recognise it when 
heard, and to obey it. Such experiences are open to all mankind, 
but only a few have made a really full use of their opportunities; 

29 



30 ' ALL HAIL ' 

tliat is to say, only a few have the seeing mind, and can inter- 
pret what they see. 

In one part of the world, thousands of years ago, a man heard 
this Voice more clearly and obeyed it more faithfully than other 
men. That part of the world was known as Aram Naharaim, i.e., 
Aram of the two Rivers, from being the land of the two great riv- 
ers, Euphrates and Tigris, and the particular part of this region 
in which he heard the Voice was called Haran. Haran was in 
those times a place of importance, situated on the left bank of the 
Belikh, a tributary of the Euphrates, and, of course, on the far 
side of the Euphrates from Palestine. It is often mentioned in 
Assyrian inscriptions, and also by later writers. To-day a long 
lange of ruins marks the site of the place where the great his- 
torical Revelation of the Bible began. As far as learned men can 
fix the date, it was about 2250 B.C. when this man determined 
-to obey the Voice of the invisible God in his inmost soul, and 
obeyed it so faithfully, and at such a cost, that he has been ever 
since acknowledged as the Father of the Faithful. All round him 
his friends and kindred worshipped m.any gods, of which the 
Moon-god was the chief, known as Baal-Haran, or the Lord of 
Haran; while teraphim, or little household gods, were, as we 
know, much-prized possessions in his grand-nephew Laban's 
household. 

This man's faithfulness to God, whose Voice he hears in his 
inmost soul, enabled him to receive trustfully the revelation of 
God, that there is only one God — not many, as his neighbours sup- 
posed — and that no image can represent Llim rightly; that to lis- 
ten to His Voice attentively and obey it dutifully is the whole 
religious duty of ,man. 

Who was this man? His name was Abraham, a man of pure 
Semitic race, dwelling, as we have seen, in Haran. His life and 
steadfast character are vividly pictured for us in the Book of 
Genesis. When the Voice of God called him, it called him to 
make great sacrifices, for he was ordered to leave his home and 
his kindred, and to go into a strange land to make a new home 
there, where he might worship the Unseen God by listening to, 
and obeying His Voice, without any image or representation to 
make that worship easier. Wjhose was the voice that Abraham 
heard? The Voice of the Unseen God Jehovah (Yahweh), which 
means, 'He is what He is,' or, 'He will be what He will be,' in 
holiness, mercy, love, and the rest of the Divine attributes. In 
Exodus iii, 14, the name is given in the first person, T am that I 
am,' the One and Only God, the unchanging and omnipotent Spirit, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 31 

most commonly called Jehovah in the Old Testament; called the 
Lord in onr English Bible. 

This mysterious and only true God spoke to Abraham and 
cslled him to a higher destiny, which was to be worked out by 
Abraham's obedience to Jehovah's Voice — obedience to be ren- 
dered in the teeth of difficulties, and to be persisted in at any cost. 

What did the Voice of Jehovah say to Abraham? (Turn to 
Genesis xii. i.) 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kin- 
dred, and from thy father's house, into a land that I will shew 
thee. AvA I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless 
thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and 
T v\'ill bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, 
and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.' The 
command was a plain one, but obedience was difficult. Most men 
vrould not have trusted the guiding of the Voice, but Abraham 
n;ade the venture of faith without doubt and without hesitation. 
With rare conciseness and dignity the Book of Genesis tells what 
took place (Genesis xii. 4). 'So Abram departed, as the Lord 
had spoken unto him ; and Lot v-ent with him : and Abram was 
seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And 
Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all 
their substance which they had gathered, and the souls that they 
had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of 
Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came.' 

Hov/ much is conveyed, what a series of pictures is unfolded 
in the narrow limits of the last seven words! The crossing of 
the Euphrates at Carchemish, sixty miles west of Haran, and 
the turning due south across the desert past Hamath and Da- 
mascus; then the climbing of the south spurs of Mount Her- 
moh if the entry to Canaan was made from tlte north, or if the 
entry was made on the east of Canaan the journey down the long- 
Jordan valley, the crossing of the river at a ford near the Dead 
Sea. and the journey to Shechem, where we read in the next verse 
Abraham arrived (Genesis xxi. 6), 'And Abram passed through 
the land urto the place of Shechem . . . and there builded 
he an altar unto the Lord.' The Voice of Jehovah had called for 
a great sacrifice, but promised a great reward; that not only should 
-Abraham be blessed, but a blessing to others, to men yet unborn, 
and -nations not yet come into being; that this blessing should 
come to them through a knowledge of the only true God. 'I will 
I'less thee, and be thou a blessing, and in thee shall all the families 
of the eartli be blessed.' (Genesis xii. 2.) This was a fore- 
shadowing to Abraham of the coming of Him who was after- 



32 ' ALL HAIL ' 

wards expected through long centuries by Abraham's descendants 
as the Messiah, who came at last, the greatest of all God's Bless- 
ings to mankind, and whom we worship to-day as 'God with us,' 
cur Lord Jesus Christ. 

Abraham (who is called Abram up to Genesis xvii. 5, when 
God changed his name to Abraham in pledge of the fulfilment of 
the Promise) was the father of the Hebrews — the family that 
grew into a clan, afterwards into a tribe, and finally into a na- 
tion, God's dealings with which constitute the main body of the 
historical Revelation of the Bible. Who were the Hebrews? 
Abraham's family and household, and the name Hebrews prob- 
ably signifies that they had *come across' from the other side of 
the flood, that is, of the great river Euphrates. It may possibly 
signify their descent from an ancestor named Eber. We must not 
think of a family of those days as a few persons, but as a com- 
munit)^ consisting of Abraham himself, the chief, and Sarai, the 
chief's wife, and his nephew Lot, and large numbers of house- 
hold slaves. Some j^ears afterwards, when Abraham had been a 
long time in Canaan, Lot was taken prisoner by Chedorlaomer, 
King of Elam, and Amraphel, King of Shinar (whose names we 
fi.nd in inscriptions on Babylonian monuments, archaeology fully 
supporting the historical character of the narratives of Genesis), 
and 'one escaped,' we read (Genesis xiv. 13), 'and told Abraham 
the Hebrew,' and Abraham 'led forth his trained men, born in 
his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far as 
Dan,' and probably by a night surprise brought back the prisoners 
and boot}'- from Hobab to the north of Damascus. This large 
force of fighting men gives some idea of the size of Abraham's 
house, or rather, we should say household, for he had no house. 
He and his household, surrounded by great multitudes of flocks 
and herds, to find pasturage for which they had to journey from 
place to place, lived in large goatskin tents, each with several 
rooms, just as the wandering Arabs do now. 

The encounter with King Amraphel, who is now identified with 
Hammurabi, the sixth king of the first Babylonian djmasty, re- 
minds us of the discovery of the code of laws of Hammurabi by 
the French explorers at Susa, a code which reveals a long-estab- 
lished and highly developed civilisation at Babylon ; and it is 
probable that both code and civilisation were known to Abraham 
when he dwelt in Ur and Haran, and afterwards in Canaan. 

So they wandered on, seeking the promised land where they 
might settle down and worship the One True God, and obey His 
inward Voice that spoke and continued to speak to their chief. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 33 

Abraham had given np a settled life among his kindred in Haran 
to be alone with God; to become God's instrument in training a 
people for His own possession, devoted exclusively to His service, 
attentive to hear His Voice, and zealous to obey it in everything. 
Out of Abraham's family, the first Hebrews, the Hebrew tribes 
and Hebrew nation were to grow, and God's dealings with them 
were to be the Revelation of Himself, here a little and there a 
little as they were able to receive it. It was to be a progressive 
Revelation to them. They were to advance as children in a school 
do, from lesser knowledge to fuller knowledge, till at last the 
preparation was complete, and the perfect Revelation of God was 
given in One, to see whom was to see God, our Lord Jesus Christ 
Himself. 

To the men of his time Abraham seemed only a wandering Ara- 
mean or Syrian chief in search of good pasturage for his flocks, 
brave and successful in a small way. But as God could see then, 
and we, after the event, can see now, he carried in his breast the 
highest fortunes of mankind, the faith in the unseen and holy 
God, the obedience to the inward Voice which was the founda- 
tion on which the Jewish Church was built, and in due time, its 
successor, the Christian Church, also. 

The Jewish Christians of the first century looked back and 
claimed the faith of their Father Abraham as their own, and felt 
that they were realising in Christ the possession of the blessing 
promised to Abraham so long before. The revelation in the first 
half of the Bible, which is called the Old Testament' (or more 
properly 'Covenant') is the continuous record of the dealings of 
God with the descendants of Abraham, through which, when the 
fulness of time was come, He was to have still more wonderful 
dealings with all mankind. 

Before we consider the chief events of Abraham's life, let us 
remember what precious gifts his faith in God brought us and 
all the human race, when he left, at God's command, his home- 
in Haran and became a wanderer on the face of the earth. His 
first and greatest gift was faith in the vision of the unseen God, 
perceived in the inward Voice, and the duty of unquestioning obe- 
dience to its accents, which we have already spoken about. He 
also very probably brought a rich body of religious stories pic- 
turing the prehistoric life of man which were apparently the com- 
mon property of himself and his relations and neighbours in Aram 
Naharaim. These stories were handed down possibly by oral 
tradition (or they may have been written on Babylonian clay tab- 
lets) through Abraham's descendants, till at last, purified by a 



34 ' ' ALL HAIL ' 

firm faith in the one and only God, which had deepened through 
long centuries of experience, they were written down in the form 
in which they are familiar to us, seemingly a compilation of a 
number of earlier written documents. 

These religious stories have been already examined by us, for 
they are the earlier narratives of Genesis, ending in the story of 
the tower of Babel or Babylon in Genesis xi. 

One thing more we owe to Abraham, and his trust in God's 
guidance that sent him across the Euphrates to found the He- 
brew race. In founding the Hebrew race, he secured for mankind 
that product of the Hebrew race, the greatest of books, or rather 
collections of books, the greatest of teachers of justice and love — 
the Bible. The father of the Hebrew race is also in a very real 
sense the father of the Bible. How unconscious that his name 
would be reverenced for all these good gifts was the Syrian chief 
when he crossed the Euphrates more than 4000 years ago ! Noth- 
ing remains now of Babylon, the great city of Abraham's native 
land; but Abraham's religion, his faith in one God, who speaks 
to man, v/hom man is bound to obey, has come to be, in its final 
form of the Christian religion, the religion of the foremost na- 
tions of the modem world. The Bible — the Book which Abra- 
ham's descendants wrote long after — is full of his name; and 
thanks to the Book, the faith of Abraham is known, and the name 
of Abraham revered, in all lands wherever the work of the 
Christian Church is carried on, as well as by Mohammedans and 
Jews. If we realise these facts, we must feel that, while life is 
full of wonders, full of miracles, not the least wonderful things 
are those that have flowed from that Aramean chief's momentous 
decision to be loyal to God and obey His voice, whatever sacri- 
fice might be involved in such obedience. 

And now we turn to the Bible and read what the book of Gene- 
sis has to tell us of the rest of Abraham's life. Genesis xii. verse 
4 : 'So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him ; and 
Lot went with him : and Abram was seventy and five years old 
when he departed out of Haran . . . and they went forth to 
go into the land of Canaan . . . and passed through the land 
unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. . . . And 
the Lord appeared unto Abram and said. Unto they seed will I 
give this land : and there builded he an altar unto the Lord. . . . 
And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of 
Bethel, and pitched his tent . . . and there he builded an al- 
tar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. And 
Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south. And there 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 43 

sacrifice we lay at the foot of the Cross. All of us ought to see 
how necessary it is that we should try our hardest to do our best. 
Such is the true aim and object of our life on earth. 

We return to Jacob. God put it into his heart to become a 
better man. He had had his ladder-dream, which was indeed 
most beautiful. We have better still. To-day we understand that 
Christ, the Lord, is our Ladder. He is the Mediator between our 
Heavenly Father and ourselves. He unites the earth with heaven. 
Let us never separate our two Testaments. Every beautiful vision 
and revelation that the Lord, in His mercy, gave to the people we 
read about in the Old Testament, has a parallel, more beautiful by 
far, in the New Testament. The Old Testament gives us the 
promise, the New the fulfilment, even Christ Himself. After the 
dream that Jacob had, we read of his wandering on ; we are told 
of another well, and how he there saw an uncle of his named 
Laban, after he had met a daughter of his, called Rachel. Jacob 
rolled away the stone from the well's mouth, and drew the water 
for the sheep to drink. Jacob and Rachel talked together, and after 
he had kissed Rachel he told her he was Rebekah's son, and Laban 
hearing the tidings came up and embraced his nephew. Laban 
and Jacob arranged that the latter should serve the former, and 
work for him for seven years, in return for which work Jacob 
should be allowed to take Rachel as his wife. 

We remember how Jacob had decei^^ed his father. Now we shall 
see how the tables were turned, and how Jacob, in his turn, was 
deceived by his uncle. When we do wrong, sooner or later we 
have to suft'er for it. Jacob was not spared the bitter lesson. To 
his cost he had to learn it. At the end of seven years, after Jacob 
had done his duty by Laban, his uncle deceived him and gave him 
the ugly, tender-eyed Leah, instead of the beautiful Rachel. Noth- 
ing remained for Jacob to do but to agree to serve Laban for a 
second term of seven years in order to receive Rachel at once, 
which he did. Jacob returned to Mamre, in time to see his father 
Isaac there before he died, and Jacob and Esau, his sons, buried 
him- On Jacob's way home, he and Esau had made up their long- 
standing quarrel. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Genesis xxxvii. to Exodus xv. 22 (The History of the Patri- 
archs — Moses and the Story of the Exodus). 

After thirty years' absence, Jacob had, as we have seen, re- 
turned to Canaan to his old father Isaac, in time to be with him 
when he died, and had buried him in the cave of Machpelah. 

Genesis xxxvii. verse i : 'And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein 
his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.' 

Joseph and Benjamin were sons of Jacob and Rachel — Joseph 
born in Padan-aram, Benjamin at Ephrath, or Bethlehem, on the 
way home, when Rachel died in giving him birth. 

Joseph was his father's favourite and a spoilt child, and in con- 
sequence, during childhood and early youth, though otherwise an 
exemplary character, was a little of a talebearer and boaster. When 
Joseph was seventeen years old, we hear of his feeding the flock, 
and having a coat of many colours which he always wore. He 
used to have dreams which he spoke of to his brethren, and they 
mocked him and were jealous of him, for his dreams were of his 
own exaltation over the rest of the family. 

Now it happened that all his brothers were wandering about in 
search of pasturage, feeding their father's flocks ; we read of them 
as being first near Shechem, and then at Dothan. Joseph was sent 
out by his father from the vale of Hebron after them to ascertain 
if all was well with them and the cattle, and he was to come back 
and report. When the brothers saw Joseph approach, they con- 
spired to slay him, and said one to another : Behold this dreamer 
Cometh.' They cast him into a pit by the advice of Reuben, who 
wished to save Joseph from death and intended to restore him to 
his father again. A party or caravan bearing spices and balm and 
myrrh from Gilead to Egypt on camels, all in single file, one beast 
tied to another, were passing by, forming one long^ continuous, 
winding line, as with slow and stately gait they wended their way 
through the varying country, now in the plain, now along the 
mountain sides. 

Genesis xxxvii. verse 28 : 'There passed by Midianites merchant- 
men, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold 
Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver, and they 
brought Joseph into Egypt.' 

44 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 45 

H'is wicked brothers had stripped Joseph of his coat of many 
colours. They killed a goat and dipped the coat in the blood ; they 
took the coat home and brought it to their father, and asked if the 
coat were Joseph's. The poor father recognised it at once, and said, 
'It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.' How could 
he fathom the extent of their wickedness? What reason had he 
to suspect? He mourned his son's supposed death for many a day, 
as though it had really taken place. Look at the poor old man in 
our picture, looking up towards heaven, the grief and anguish 
in his heart expressed in his face. 

Genesis xxxvii. 35 : 'And he said, For I will go down into the 
grave unto my son mourning.' 

Now we are most anxious to hear what followed. All this 
time Joseph was not dead, but alive. Events come about in a won- 
derful way. A wicked deed had been done on earth. God Al- 
mighty was near to will and to bring it about, that intended wicked- 
ness should result in good. He loved and protected Joseph, and 
had a purpose for Joseph to fulfil. People are absolutely power- 
less to harm others, even if they try, when it is against the Lord's 
will. We see this times out of number ; the Bible tells us this, and 
our own lives also prove this very often, if we have eyes to see. 

We see the destiny of Joseph gradually working itself out, as we 
see the purpose of God fulfilling itsef in the vicissitudes of his 
early life. The Ishmeelites, with their long line of camels, travelled 
along towards Egypt, probably by way of Joppa, Gaza, and Zoan, 
which was the first station in Eg3'pt. Joseph was sold a second 
time, and his purchaser's name was Potiphar, who was the cap- 
tain of the bodyguard of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. 

The Lord did not desert Joseph. We must not forget this. 
The Egyptians saw that Joseph was a good, conscientious young 
man; that he worked well and diligently; and thus very soon we 
find him promoted and made an overseer, or house steward, over 
his master's house, one who was trusted and honoured by every- 
body he had dealings with, Potiphar had a wicked wife. Joseph 
was tempted by her and repulsed the temptation saying, in words 
that are still an example to us when assailed by temptation, 'How 
can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?' Thereupon 
she brought a false accusation against Joseph. Her husband be- 
lieved her, and was very angry with Joseph. He ought to have 
known better, and to have judged Joseph according to his proved 
trustworthiness. So now Joseph was cast into prison by his in- 
dignant master. 

The book of Genesis, which we are still reading, tells us that the 



46 •. ' ALL HAIL ' 

gaoler of the prison was kind to him. Perhaps the idea comes 
to us, how strange it is that the Lord should allow Joseph to be 
cast into prison, because He, being Almighty, and loving Joseph, 
might have saved him from undergoing this unjust treatment. But 
we cannot see all that God sees. We see in part. He sees the 
whole of everything. We see the beginning, He sees the end from 
the beginning. It was God's wish that Joseph should be made to 
suffer imprisonment ; and we shall be told the reason why almost 
immediately. In prison it happened that two fellow-prisoners with 
Joseph, serv^ants of Pharaoh (king of Egypt), the chief butler or 
cupbearer, and the chief baker, had remarkable dreams. We re- 
member that Joseph had already, from boj^hood, the gift from God 
of discerning the meaning of dreams. In this case he was able to 
tell these two men everything concerning their respective dreams. 
Joseph's interpretation turned out marvelously true. 

Two years after, Pharaoh, in his palace, dreamed disquieting 
dreams. He wished to know what the}^ meant. All his wise men 
and magicians failed to explain them. The king was sore per- 
plexed. One of the king's servants from the prison, the cup- 
bearer, had been released, and restored to favour as Joseph pre- 
dicted, and was back again in his old place serving the king. Sud- 
denly the cup-bearer thought of Joseph, and proposed that he 
should be sent for, and the king decided to have him fetched out of 
prison and brought to his palace. Trusting in God, Joseph stood 
in the king's presence. Tt is not in me,' he said modestly and 
truly. 'God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.' (Genesis xli. 
verse i6). 

God gave to Joseph the meaning of the dreams, and he told it to 
the king. He foretold that there would be seven years of plenty 
in the land, followed by seven years of famine. It was the Lord 
who put all wisdom into Joseph's heart and head. Here was the 
reason of God letting him be put into prison. What had seemed 
his greatest misfortune had turned out his greatest blessing. His 
imprisonment led up to his success in life. It does not do for us 
to be impatient, nor always to be expecting to know at once the 
reason why. We are meant to accept trustfully God's wishes and 
decrees. In His own good time he will enable us to see the reason. 
The king had need of a clever person to look after the affairs of 
his state and country. He realised that he could do no better 
than appoint Joseph, who had the spirit of God in him. Thus he 
became second in the land, the next man in importance to Phar- 
aoh himself. 

Genesis xli. verse 41 : 'And Pharaoh said unto Joseph : See, I 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 39 

as to let a father kill his own son. What the Lord did wish to 
ascertain was, whether Abraham's love for his Creator was the 
thing uppermost in his heart. God is Love. The God of Love 
is never cruel. Abraham was tried and found not to be wanting. 
We read about Abraham that he believed the Lord, and that this 
was counted to him for righteousness. Oh! for the same to be 
said of us when the Lord thinks fit to try our love for Him. 
The result of the tempting or testing of Abraham was that human 
sacrifices, which were very common in Canaan, were seen by him 
and by his descendants not to be acceptable to God and were there- 
fore abandoned. 

In Genesis xxii. verse 13, we read how a ram was substituted 
for a human sacrifice: 'And Abraham lifted up his eyes and 
looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his 
horns : and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up 
for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called 
the name of that place Jehovah-jireh : as it is said to this day, In 
the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.' 

We have seen Abraham's obedience, and the Lord's mercy. 
The Lord blessed Abraham to the end of his days. Among the 
blessings was the success of Abraham' in the night attack already 
referred to on Chedorlaomer and the three other kings, from whom 
he rescued their prisoners, his nephew Lot, and the booty of 
Sodom. We are told how Sarah died, and how Abraham bought 
from Ephron the Hittite a field containing the cave of Machpelah 
to bury her in. Before he died himself he sent out a trusted 
servant, the elder of his house — that is, the steward — to his own 
country, Aram Naharaim, to Haran, to fetch back a wife of the 
pure blood of his own kindred for his son Isaac. At the end of 
the journey the steward halted at a well, and a beautiful damsel 
came to water her father's flock. She kindly gave him to drink 
and watered his camels also. 

Here is our picture telling us all about it. Her name was Re- 
bekah, and her father's name was Bethuel, the son of Nahor, 
Abraham's kinsman. Alone she gave water to Abraham's servants 
and also to his camels. Abraham's steward accompanied her to 
the house of her father Bethuel, Abraham's nephew, and re- 
mained there for the night. All was arranged, and Rebekah and 
Laban, her brother, agreed that she should return at once with 
Abraham's messenger and become Isaac's wife. Abraham's stew- 
ard gave Rebekah the proper gifts for a betrothal — jewels of sil- 
ver and gold and raiment. He gave also to her brother and her 
mother precious things. Her own dear old nurse travelled with 



40 - 'ALL HAIL' 

her, and her damsels or maids, all of them riding on camels to 
the new home that was to be hers. 

Genesis xxiv. verse 62 : 'Isaac came from the way of the well 
Lahai-roi; for he dwelt in the south country. And Isaac went 
out to meditate in the field at the eventide : And he lifted up his 
eyes and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. And Re- 
bekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off 
the camel. For she had said unto the servant. What man is this 
that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said. It 
is my master: Therefore she took a vail and covered herself. 
And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. 'And 
Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, 
and she became his wife; and he loved her; and Isaac was com- 
forted after his mother's death.' 

Rebekah had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau was a hairy man, 
and Jacob was smooth. Besides being different in appearance, they 
were also different in character. Esau and Jacob had quite dif- 
ferent tastes. Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; 
Jacob, we are told, was a plain man, a stay-at-home shepherd, 
dwelling in tents. Isaac loved his son Esau the best ; Rebekah, 
on the other hand, preferred her son Jacob. The story tells us 
that one day Jacob was preparing some food, boiling red lentils. 
Esau came home from the chase, tired and hungry. He asked his 
brother to give him some of the red pottage. Jacob was unkind ; 
he did not give him' the food at once. He had a selfish nature, 
which would not allow him readily to give anything for nothing. 

'Look here,' said Jacob to Esau, 'I will give you some food if you 
will give me something in return.' Not a nice way of doing 
things, this. Jacob said, 'Take this food, but you must sell me your 
birthright.' This means, that Jacob wanted to be the eldest brother 
and come first, before his brother in everything. Esau, being 
a careless sort of person, not minding this proposal either one way 
or the other, his sole concern being that he was hungry, wished 
only to have food and drink, and accepted Jacob's offer. Jacob, 
at this time of his life, was not by any means a good man ; he was 
a schemer as well as very selfish ; he loved crooked ways of getting 
things for himself. He had to be taught, and to be trained in the 
way he was to go. Before he died, we see how God, through the 
discipline of life, taught him his lesson. The Creator knew that 
there was good in him, which required to be drawn out by the 
education of experience. God had infinite patience with Jacob. 
At first the latter failed over and over again ; but presently we see 
him trying hard to overcome his faults. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 41 

Isaac, the Patriarch, was now a very old man. His eyes were 
dim. He felt that he might die any moment; he wished to bless 
Esau, so he spoke as follows : — 

Genesis xxvii. verse 3: 'Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy 
weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and 
take me some venison; and make me savoury meat, such as I love, 
and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee 
before I die. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his 
son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring 
it. And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying. Behold, I heard 
thy father speak unto Esau thy brother saying, Bring me venison. 
. . . . Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that 
which I command thee.' 

Rebekah instructed her son Jacob how to deceive his father: 
that he was to go and fetch two good kids and make savoury meat, 
and bring it to his father, before Esau returned, so as to get the 
blessing for himself. Rebekah knew that Isaac was so old that he 
was nearly blind, and she thought that all would be safe, and he 
would never find out which son stood in front of him. Jacob re- 
minded his mother of the difference in the feel of their skins — Esau 
was hairy, Jacob smooth. Isaac, being blind, might possibly ask his 
son to let him feel him. Jacob, perhaps, felt mean at the idea 
of deceiving a blind man, and that man his own father. Rebekah 
overcame his scruples. It was bad of both of them : of her, to pro- 
pose such a base and wicked thing; and of him to do it. The kid 
was brought. Rebekah cooked the meat; she took some skins of 
the kids of the goats and put them upon his hands and the smooth 
of his neck, and sent Jacob into his father's presence. There he 
passed himself off as Esau, and stole his brother's blessing. 

Jacob had been twice his brother's supplanter : first he had stolen 
away Esau's birthright, and now he had stolen away his blessing. 
Esau was furious. He wished to kill his brother. Isaac, after all 
this had happened, counselled Jacob to go into his own country in 
search of a wife, one of the daughters of Laban, his mother's 
brother. Rebekah, too, perhaps fearing for her son Jacob's life, on 
account of Esau's wrath, advised him for the same purpose to leave 
the country. Thus, having two reasons for leaving hotne, Jacob 
decided to flee, and he set out on his long journey to H'aran. 
One night, while resting in the open, he took stones and made him- 
self a pillow of them. It was at Bethel, between Beersheba and 
Haran. He went to sleep, and the Lord sent him a vision, a most 
beautiful dream. Genesis xxviii, verse 12 : 

'And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the 



42 ' ALL HAIL ' 

top of it reached to heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending 
and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and 
said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and God of 
Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to 
thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou 
shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, 
and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and 
will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee 
again into this land ; for I will not leave thee until I have done 
that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of 
his sleep, and he said. Surely the Lord is in this place; and I 
knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this 
place. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the 
gate of Heaven.' 

This shows how the consciousness of God's presence, brought 
home to Jacob by his dream, awakened into active life the conscious- 
ness of his own guilt towards his old father and towards his 
brother Esau. From this consciousness of guilt, and of the presence 
of a Holy God, we may date the beginning of Jacob's repentance 
and of his new life. 

Verse i8 : 'And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took 
the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pil- 
lar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name 

of that place Bethel And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 

If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, 
and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come 
again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my 
God; and this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be 
God's house ; and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give 
the tenth unto thee.' 

What a beautiful and comforting promise Jacob received from 
the Lord. We have been told that Jacob built an altar and thanked 
God. Building altars and sacrificing on them is what people used 
to do in the days of the Patriarchs, in order to show their gratitude 
to God. In the New Testament, and in our days, we are told to do 
differently. We are no more required to build an altar of stone. 
Jesus asks us to give him our willing hearts, whole and undivided. 
He asks us to love him more than anybody or anything in the 
world. He has shown us how we are to live. He has given up 
His life for us, and we are to devote ours to His service. This 
alone is acceptable. This is what is expected from us who live 
at the present time. Our hearts are the altar. Our love is the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 35 

was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to 
sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.' 

On acount of the famine we read about in the Bible, Abraham 
went to Egypt in search of food. From Eygpt, after a time, the 
caravan wandered on, leaving without regret the splendour of 
great cities like Memphis and Thebes for the freedom and hard- 
ships of the old. loved, nomad life. We are told how much Abra- 
ham had to carry about with him in the way of slaves, and cat- 
tle, and silver, and gold-probably, in part, the gifts of the King 
of Egypt There was not sufficient food for Abraham's flocks and 
herds, and for those of Lot, after the return to Canaan, and there 
arose a strife between the herdmen of Abraham's cattle and the 
herdmen of Lot's cattle. Abraham, a man of peace and goodwill, 
said (Genesis xiii, verse 8) : 'Let there be no strife, I pray thee 
between me and thee, and between my herdmen ^nd thy herdmen' 
for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate 
thyself, I pray thee, from me; if thou wilt take the left hand, then 
I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then 
I wil go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all 
he plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before 
he Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of 
he Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then 
Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east • 
and they separated themselves the one from the other. 'Abram 
duelled m the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of 
the plam, and pitched his tent towards Sodont. But the men of 
Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedincrly ' 

Lot was not at all like his uncle Abraham. He was\either 
of Ilinnd'f '^-^^""ll"^^^- H^ --t^d to enjoy himself in a life 
of self-mdulgence. He was satisfied to live an easy-going exist- 
ence m the very bad company which abounded in Sodom He 
gave way to drink. This not only harmed himself, but others 
especially his own family, because he set them a bad example 
from\i^ Y',^ '"^ unto Abraham, after that Lot was separated 
om him. Lift up now thme eyes, and look from the place where 
hou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward 
or all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to 
thy seed for ever. . . . Then Abraham removed his Lt and 
catne and dwelt m the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron and 
built there an altar unto the Lord.' -^^oron, and 

Abraham was now brought into contact with different nations 
and their kings, who lived in those times in that part of the world 
and proved himself a just man in all his dealings with them 



Z6 ' ALL HAIL ' 

After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abraham 
in a vision. His great wish was fulfilled. When Abraham and 
Sarah were very old people, a son was born to them' whom they 
called Isaac, which means laughter, because it seemed so laugh- 
able that two very old people like Abraham and Sarah should 
have a child. A son, named Ishmael, had already been born to 
Abraham by Hagar, his bondwoman. The Lord had given to 
Abraham the following promise: 'Thou shalt call his name Isaac, 
and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting cove- 
nant, and with his seed after himf.' 

One day Abraham was sitting at his tent door, when angels 
came ; angels, that is, messengers from the Lord. Look at them 
in our picture, and Abraham bowing down before them'. He re- 
ceived them kindly. He called Sarah out of the tent, asking her 
to bring food and refreshment. Look at her, standing at the tent 
door. 

Lot also had a vision of angels, but his was not of a pleasant 
character. The news he received was bad. He was told that the 
v/alled towns of Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed by fire 
and brimstone. All came to pass as had been foretold. Lot alone 
out of all the town, with his two daughters, managed to flee and 
was saved. His wife, because she disobeyed and looked back at 
the burning city, was turned into a pillar of salt. That means 
probably that when the terrible storm broke on Sodom and Go- 
morrah, Lot's wife, hanging back, was enveloped in a deluge of 
salt and bitumen. Thus overwhelmed and crusted over with salt, 
she might be very well called a pillar of salt, as a person covered 
with snow might fairly be called a pillar of snow. Pinnacles, or 
pillars of crystallised rock salt, are at times found detached from 
the mountain of Sodom (Jebel Usdom), a vast salt cliff on the 
margin of the Dead Sea. V/e can picture to ourselves the whole 
scene; Lot fleeing for dear life, his wife petrified in the storm of 
salt which swept over her and covered her. 

To return to Abraham. We now read of the time when the 
Lord thought fit to try his faith. This time comes to all of us. 
I v/onder how you and I will behave. We will now hear how 
Abraham stood the test, and we learn a lesson, let us hope, 
from his splendid example. God is a jealous God, and He ex- 
pects to be the first with us. The Lord commanded Abraham 
tr sacrifice his own beloved son, Isaac. In olden daj^s and among 
all the people of Canaan and the neighbourhood, it had been the 
custom to sacrifice human beings as well as animals. In our time 
v/e are aghast to think such a thing was possible. Such an idea 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE -^'j 

:ts the sacrifice of his son could have been no shock to Abraham; 
for a son was not considered as a separate and responsible being 
in those days, but a part of his father, and to sacrifice a son was 
looked on by every one as equivalent to a father's sacrifice of him- 
self. 

The reason of this testing of Abraham was, that it was a fore- 
shadowing of a great event, for since these days of the Old Tes- 
tament the greatest event in the world has taken place. Our Lord 
Jesus Christ has been born into the world, and has suffered and 
died on the Cross for our sakes. He is the One and Only com- 
plete Sacrifice. He alone can save our souls. He died and rose 
in order that we might live. This our Heavenly Father ordained. 
This our Lord and Savior carried out. Can any one of us 
fathom the love of God?— the love of Jesus Christ for us, God's 
sinful children? 

Our Book tells us, Genesis xxii. : 'And it came to pass after 
these things that God did tempt Abraham. . . . And Abra- 
ham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass and took 
two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clove the 
wood for the burnt offering, and rose up and went unto the place 
of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham 
lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar oft'. And Abraham said 
unto his young men. Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the 
lad will go yonder and worship, and com.e again unto you. And 
Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon 
Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and 
they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham 
his father and said. My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. 
And he said. Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb 
tor a burnt offering? And Abraham said. My son, God will pro- 
vide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of 
them together. And they came to the place which God had told 
him of. And Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in 
order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon 
the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took a 
knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him 
out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said Here 
am I.' ' 

Abraham, as we know, loved his son more than any visible being 
m the world, but Abraham loved the unseen Lord the best of all 
and therefore he was ready to face this supreme test of his will- 
ingness to do His Maker's Will. It is of no use in this life to 
give anything which gives us no trouble, be it to God or to our 



38 i ' ALL HAIL ' 

fellow-creatnres. We will try and make this clear. Supposing 
we happen to have many toys and many books. Out of our plenty 
wc make a friend a present. We do not mind at all if we keep 
or part with one or the other of most of the many things we pos- 
sess. We shall never miss them. On the other hand, there is 
one particular thing which we prize very much indeed. Now, if 
w^e part with our favorite treasure, there is at once quite a differ- 
ent feeling in us. We become better by the sacrificing of our- 
selves. It improves our character, and we climb a rung higher 
on the ladder of life. 

Suppose you have a canary-bird, such a dear, little, bright, yel- 
low songster. Round the corner, in a street where houses are 
high, and hardly any sunshine ever manages to penetrate the gloom, 
and sad people cannot easily be cheered up, and are too poor to 
live elsewhere, there just exists a poor blind boy. He cannot go 
out into the fields, nobody has any time to help him', and the 
green fields are too far away. He never hears the joyous birds 
singing nor sees the blue sky. How great would be his pleasure, 
had he your canary-bird. This idea strikes 3'ou. You go and visit 
him, and bring him your treasure. 

You miss your bird badly, but this feeling gives place to an- 
other, and you begin to experience real satisfaction. Something 
tells you (I am sure it is our old friend Conscience, yes, indeed, 
it is no other) that you have done well. You have thought more 
of somebody else than of yourself. In this case you have thought 
of a poor child less favoured than yourself. Another time it will 
make you think of giving up more important things to please 
God. Now do you follow me, and see that God did not speak 
only to Abraham, but speaks also to each one of us? The Lord 
sees the blind boy's pleasure, and your little gift is acceptable to 
your Heavenly Father because you have tried to please one of 
His creatures. We realise that it must be only the best of every- 
thing we have to give, which is good enough to offer to the Lord. 
What can any little sacrifice of ours ever be, compared to the 
sacrifice made by Jesus Christ for us. 

When Abraham had prepared everything, the angel of the Lord 
appeared out of heaven. And what blessed news did the angel 
bring? What a surprise! This was the message from God to 
Abraham (Genesis xxii. verse 12) : 'Lay not thine hand upon the 
lad, neither do thou anything unto him : for now I know that thou 
fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only 
son from me.' 

It was not the kind Lord's intention to do so terrible a thing 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 47 

have set thee over all the land of Egypt.' Whilst we are reading 
this passage we will look at our picture. The narrative continues 
(verse 42) : 'And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put 
it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, 
and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him to ride in 
the second chariot which he had, and they cried before him, Bow 
the knee, and he made him' ruler over all the land of Egypt. And 
Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no 
man lift up his hand or foot in the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh 
called Joseph's name Zaphnathpaaneah' {i.e., God spake, and he, 
the bearer of the name, came to life). 'And he gave him to wife 
Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On. And Joseph 
went out over all the land of Egypt. And Joseph was thirty years 
old when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And Joseph 
went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all 
the land of Egypt. And in the seven plenteous years the earth 
brought forth by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the 
seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up food in the 
cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, 
laid he up in the same. And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of 
the sea, very much, until he left numbering, for it was without 
number. And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years 
of famine came .... and Joseph called the name of the 
first-born Manasseh : For God, said he, hath made me forget all 
my toil, and all my father's house. And the name of the second 
called he Ephraim : For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the 
land of my affliction.' 

All the success that Joseph had in his life was due to God's 
merciful guiding. Joseph was sensible enough to know this, and 
took no credit to himself. This Pharaoh was the more ready 
to appoint an Asiatic from Canaan as his Prime Minister, inas- 
much as he was not an Egyptian, but of Asiatic race himself. It 
may be observed here that the obelisk so familiar to us as Cleo- 
patra's Needle on the Thames Embankment, was originally one of 
the obelisks put up in front of the Temple, where Joseph's father- 
in-law was priest, by Thothmes III. 

In Genesis xli. verse 53, we read: 'And the seven years of plen- 
teousness that was in the land of Egypt were ended. And the 
seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had 
said: and the dearth was in all lands, but in the land of Egypt 
there was bread. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, 
the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. And Pharaoh said unto 
all the Eg}T)tians, Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do. And 



48 i ' ALL HAIL ' 

the famine was over all the face of the earth. And Joseph 
opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians, and the 
famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came 
into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine 
was so sore in all lands.' 

Now, who do you think were amongst those buyers of corn, 
journeying to Egypt? Can you guess? Joseph's own wicked breth- 
ren. The famine was great in the land of Canaan, and they were 
all starving. Jacob told his sons to go to Egypt to buy corn. Ac- 
cording to the Eastern custom, they took gifts with them to pre- 
sent to the lord of the land. Joseph's brethren arrived, and came 
'and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the 
earth. And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made 
himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them.' 

They knew him not. How could they? They were ignorant of 
all that had happened to him, after their cruel, unbrotherly be- 
haviour towards him. Joseph asked them if they were spies, and 
questioned them about their home and parentage. He told them 
that it was impossible for him to sell them corn, unless one brother 
remained behind as hostage, and unless they went home and 
returned with their youngest brother to Egypt. This news upset 
them greatly. Well, they knew that their father would never give 
his consent to this proposal. The poor old man, they knew, had 
never recovered from the loss of his son Joseph. Therefore he 
would never trust Benjamin out of his sight. They could not 
conceive what to do. They were starving: they required corn for 
food for their families and cattle at home. 

Up to this, no punishment for their wickedness had come to them. 
Here it came sure as fate. Great trouble was upon them. They 
felt their sin had found them out. They spoke out their minds to 
each other, not supposing that the great Egyptian prince could 
understand their language, for he spoke to them through an inter- 
preter. But Joseph understood every word of their confession of 
guilt and their remorse, and was obliged to turn away and leave 
them, that he might weep unobserved. They had now no choice but 
to return to Canaan, and try to persuade their father to trust Ben- 
jamin to their care. 

Joseph had a kind and generous heart. It was aching to see his 
youngest brother again, and it was to see his brother that he made 
this condition. It grieved him to see the distress his people were 
in. It did not occur to him to attempt any retaliation for the cruel 
treatment which he had received at their hands. That was all for- 
given. The only thing that he was thinking about was, that 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 49 

whereas he was in plentj'. his people at home were starving. He 
ordered that their sacks should be filled with corn, and, without 
their knowledge, every man's bundle of money was hidden in his 
sack. Afterwards, on their way home, one of them opened his 
sack to feed his ass at the inn, and found the money in the sack's 
mouth, and then they all found that the same had been done to them. 

They and their father were sore afraid when they saw the bun- 
dles of money, and Jacob, their father, said unto them: 'Me have 
ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and 
ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. 
And Reuben spake unto his father saying: Slay my two sons if I 
bring him not to thee ; deliver him into my hand and I will bring 
him to thee again. And he said : My son shall not go down with 
you, for his brother is dead, and he is left alone. If mischief befall 
him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my grey 
hairs in sorrow to the grave' (Genesis xlii. verse 36). 

The famine continued in the land of Canaan. The provisions 
which Joseph had given his family were all at last consumed. A 
second time they were obliged to travel to Egypt in quest of new 
supplies. Poor old Jacob had now to make up his mind to part 
with his dearly beloved Benjamin, They all knew that nothing 
short of his consenting to part with his youngest son would con- 
tent the lord of the land, as his brethren called Joseph. This time 
they were tested once more by the orders of Joseph. On the 
occasion of this second visit, Joseph again had every sack filled 
with food, and every man's money put in his sack's mouth. H'e 
gave orders to take his own silver cup, and have it put in Benja- 
min's sack. He also told his servants that on the return journey 
the men should be stopped, their sacks searched, and that the man 
was to return to Egypt and be detained there in whose sack the 
silver cup was found. 

Can you imagine the terror of these guilty-minded brothers, when 
the cup was discovered in the sack of Benjamin? Here was a 
terrible situation for them to face. They dared not return to their 
father without Benjamin. They fell upon their faces. They were 
brought low. This the Lord had wrought. Joseph was the in- 
strument in God's hands for their discomfiture. 

Joseph's brethren were terrified. They had been found with the 
Egyptian lord's property in their possession. There was no ex- 
plaining away this fact. They were all brought back as thieves to 
the presence of Joseph. And now a generous spirit began to show 
itself in one of them. Judah became the spokesman for the rest. 
He explained firmly, but very humbly, the way their father had 



50 1 ' ALL HAIL ' 

bound them to bring back Benjamin safe, and that he himself had 
become surety for the lad to his father. He made a definite ofifer. 

Genesis xliv. 33 : 'Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide 
instead of the lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up 
with his brethren. For how shall I go up to my father and the 
lad be not with me? Lest peradventure I see the evil that shall 
come on my father.' 

And now we come to the opportunity for Joseph to return good 
for evil. He had in him the Christ-like spirit, eager to give to all 
free forgiveness. Note the splendid generosity of the v/ay Joseph 
deals with his brethren in the following passage. Judah's offer 
showing love for his father, which made him ready to give him- 
self as a slave to spare his father the sorrow of losing Benjamin, 
so touched Joseph that we read: — 

Genesis xlv. : 'Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all 
them that stood by Jiim ; and he cried : Cause every man to go out 
from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made 
himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud ; and the 
Eg>'ptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto 
his brethren: I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his 
brethren could not answer him, for they were troubled at his 
presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, 
I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your 
brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be not grieved, 
nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did 
send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath 
the famine been in the land : and yet there are five years, in which 
there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me be- 
fore you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your 
lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me 
hither, but God, and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh and lord 
of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. 
Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him. Thus saith 
thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt, Come down 
unto me, tarry not; and thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, 
and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy 
children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou 
hast: and there will I nourish thee .... And he fell upon 
his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon 
his neck. Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them : 
and after that his brethren talked with him. And the fame thereof 
v/as heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come; 
and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants. And Pharaoh said 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 51 

unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, 
and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; And take your father 
and your households, and come unto me : and I will give you the 
good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. 
Now thou art commanded, this do ye: take your wagons out of 
the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and 
bring your father, and come. Also regard not your stuff; for the 
good of all the land of Egypt is yours. And the children of Israel 
did so: and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the command- 
ment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. To all 
of them, he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin, 
he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. 
And to his father he sent after this manner : Ten asses laden with 
the good things of Egypt, and ten she asses laden with corn and 
bread and meat for his father by the way. So he sent his breth- 
ren away, and they departed : and he said unto them, See that ye 
fall not out by the way. And they went up out of Egypt, and 
came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father, and told 
him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the 
land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them 
not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had 
said unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had 
sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. And 
Israel said. It is enough ; Joseph my son is yet alive ; I will go and 
see him before I die.' 

Is not this a beautiful ending? H'ow wise and wonderful are 
God's judgments and God's ways. Turn to Genesis xlvi. verse i : 
'And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to 
Beersheba, and oflfered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. 
And God spake unto him in the visions of the night, and said. 
Jacob, Jacob. And he said. Here am I. And He said, I am God, 
the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will 
there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into 
Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again.' Jacob arrived 
safely in Egypt, and Joseph brough him before Pharaoh, 

The record in Genesis tells us that it came to pass after these 
things that Joseph was told that his father was sick, and that he 
took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, and went to 
Jacob. Then Jacob gave him a sketch of his own life, beginning 
with God's appearing to him at Luz in the land of Canaan, and 
blessing him, and ending with what was evidently his most treas- 
ured memory, the death of Rachel, his favourite wife. Genesis 
xlviii. verse 7: 'And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel 



52 'ALL HAIL' 

died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was 
a little way to come unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the 
way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem.' 

Genesis xlviii. verse 8: 'And Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and 
said, Who are these? And Joseph said unto his father, They are 
my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, 
Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. Now 
the eyes of Jacob were dim for age, so that he could not see. And 
he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced 
them. And Jacob said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy 
face: and lo, God hath showed me also thy seed. And Joseph 
brought them out from between his knees, and he bowed himself 
with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both: . . . . 
And Jacob put his hands upon their heads. And he blessed Joseph, 
and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did 
walk, the God which fed me all my life along unto this day; the 
angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads : and let my 
name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham 
and Isaac ; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the 

earth And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but 

God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your 
fathers.' 

Genesis xlix. : 'And Jacob called unto his sons and said, Gather 
yourselves together.' Jacob blessed them all separately and gave 
them instructions. In Genesis xlix. verse 29, we read : 'And he 
charged them, and said unto them', I am to be gathered unto my 
people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of 
Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, 
which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham 
bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a 
buryingplace. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; 
there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried 
Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was 
from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of 
commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and 
yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.' 

Genesis 1. : 'And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept 
upon him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants, 
the physicians, to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed 
Israel.' 

If you want to know all about what embalming means, you must 
go to the British Museum when you are in London, and there you 
will see for 3^ourselves many mummies, embalmed bodies, pre- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 53 

served from the olden days of Egypt, We continue reading, verse 
4: 'And when the days of mourning were passed, Joseph spake 
unto the house of Pharaoh saying, If now I have found grace in 
your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My 
father made me swear saying, Lo, I die; in my grave which I have 
digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. 
Now therefore, let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and 
I will come again. And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thj^ father, 

according as he made thee swear And Joseph dwelt 

in Egypt, he, and his father's house ; and Joseph lived an hundred 
and ten years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third 
generation : the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were 
borne upon Joseph's knees,' that is to say, recognised as his descen- 
dants. 

Genesis 1. verse 24: 'And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, 
and God will surely, visit you and bring you out of this land, unto 
the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And 
Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will 
surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So 
Joseph died, being an hundred and ten 3^ears old, and they em- 
balmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.' So ends the 
book of Genesis, with the death of Joseph, and the embalming of 
his body, which was put in a coffin, that is, no doubt, in the usual 
decorated mummy-case, such as is to be seen any day in the British 
Museum. 

The story of Joseph's life and the picture it gives of his character, 
is a fitting completion to the graphic scenes from the lives of the 
patriarchs, which form the bulk of the first book of the Bible, which 
is also a part of the first part of the Bible known as the Pentateuch, 
in which is preserved what has survived of the early tradition and 
history of the Jewish nation. Joseph, the most nearly faultless of 
the Jewish patriarchs, is a singularly noble and attractive character. 
The grave faults which are given with unshrinking honesty by 
the inspired writings in the lives of the other patriarchs, partic- 
ularly in the life of Joseph's father, Jacob, are not to be found in 
his high-minded and consistent son. One might have expected that 
the son of Rachel, who stole her father's idols, the grandson of her 
who persuaded her son to deceive his father, and, above all, the son 
of Jacob himself, would have inherited their love of crooked ways. 

But Joseph was, from his youth up, from the time he was thrown 
on his own resources, straightforward and trustworthy in every 
position of life, whether acting as steward of Potiphar's house, 01 
as deputy for the keeper of the prison, or as chief ruler over tht 



54 ^ ' ALL HAIL ' 

land of Eg3^pt. His wonderful success in life teaches the useful 
lesson of the supreme value of a trustworthy character. His gen- 
erosity and magnanimity to his unnatural brothers, who had plotted 
to kill him, and had sold him' as a slave to the Midianites, is 
very wonderful at that early age, long before men had the ex- 
ample and teaching of Christ. The way in which he rejoices over 
every sign of better feeling towards their father in these guilty 
brothers shows the spirit of a true Christian ; and the way he put 
his brothers at their ease when he disclosed himself to them, by 
making little of their offences, and ascribing his coming to Egypt 
to the purpose of God, has the delicacy of a true gentleman. 

And all this beautiful and noble character is built up upon a 
foundation without which it would not exist — the deepest godliness, 
which makes him feel thankfully that he is always in God's hands. 
'God was with him,' is the summary of the writer of the Book of 
Genesis, and 'the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hands.' 
That he has been taken as a type of our Lord is very fitting, for 
doubtless the Spirit of our Lord was the Power that worked in him. 
The light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world was 
evidently with him. His love of his enemies, his ungrudging for- 
giveness of injuries, the way he overcame evil with good, is not 
approached in any other character in the patriarchal age. 

In the Book of Genesis, which we have been studying, we have 
found two main divisions. The first eleven chapters contain the 
great prehistoric traditions of the origin of the world and of man, 
and of God's dealings with the human race in its childhood. These 
traditions were, perhaps, as we have pointed out, brought by Abra- 
ham' when he came up from his home in Aram-Naharaim into 
the land of Canaan, in obedience to the Voice of God. With the 
call of Abraham, at the beginning of the twelfth chapter, we enter 
on a traditional, and at the same time historical account, of the 
origin of the Jewish race. In these thirty-nine chapters we have, 
not the complete biographies of the patriarchs, but rather a series 
of vivid scenes from their lives. It is probable that the traditions 
of the patriarchs gathered round the sanctuaries where they had 
v/orshipped. It is possible that the memories of the patriarchs may 
have been handed down by word of mouth, for it is difficult to over- 
estimate the strength of memory in times when there is little writ- 
ing. It is less likely that the narratives were written down on 
clay tablets, such as we find in Babylonian libraries; though the 
possibility that Abraham, coming from Haran, brought with him 
the cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing, and perhaps clay tablets, 
containing the Creation stories and other early narratives of Gen- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 55 

esis, is interesting to consider. If the minuteness of the pictures 
of patriarchal life has to be accounted for, it may be remembered 
that pastoral life in the unchanging and meditative East changes 
not at all, and it is not improbably true that as regards externals, 
the life of the wandering Aramaean chief, Abraham, is fairly rep- 
resented by the life of the wandering Arab sheikh of to-day. 

The story of the Exodus, and the journey to Canaan, is the sub- 
ject of the Book of Exodus, the second book in the Pentateuch, 
which we have now to consider. It was rightly regarded by the 
Israelites, as the descendants of Israel (Jacob) were called, as the 
turning-point in their history — the decisive chain of events which 
lifted them out of the morass of slavery on to the high ground of 
conquerors of Canaan, making a horde of slaves a nation of war- 
riors. What had made the Israelites a horde of slaves? They had 
come to Egypt and settled in Goshen on the invitation of the king 
of Egypt, himself, probably, an Asiatic. In Goshen they lived as 
in Canaan, a free, pastoral life, with their flocks and herds. After 
Joseph was dead, and the Pharaoh, who was Joseph's friend, had 
died too, a new king of Egypt noticed with alarm the rapid growth 
in the numbers of the Israelites, and feared that in time of war they 
might join an invader and imperil the kingdom. To stop this 
growth in numbers, Pharaoh took them for forced labour, and 
made them build him treasure cities. The forced labour, under 
severe taskmasters, was intended to take the manly spirit out of 
them, and to reduce them to the position of slaves. In Exodus i. 
14, we are told, 'he made their lives bitter with hard bondage ; in 
mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All 
their service wherein they made them serve was with rigour.' He 
set taskmasters over them, who treated them cruelly and made 
them, very unhappy. They had to work their hardest, both in the 
fields and in the cities. They had to make bricks to build with, and 
bricks of this kind have survived to the present day, and some cf 
them you can see for yourselves in the British Museum. You 
can plainly see the little cut-up pieces of straw which were mixed 
up with the clay. 

But ill-used, overworked, and underfed, the Israelites multiplied 
even more rapidly than before. As the forced labour had not had 
the desired effect, Pharaoh adopted other measurse. He aimed at 
stopping the increasing numbers by killing all the male children as 
soon as they were born. We read of one mother in particular, 
Jochebed, the wife of Amram, who, wishing to save her child, hid 
him for three months, and when no longer able to keep him with 
her, bethought herself of a plan. Exodus ii. 3 : 'And when she 



56 ' ALL HAIL ' 

could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, 
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; 
and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood 
afar off, to wit what would be done to him.' The ark was built, 
not of what we call bulrushes in England, but of papyrus reed, front 
the inner layers of which the first paper mas made, and the name 
paper derived. The slime was bitumen, probably from Babylonia. 
Here lay this ark among the river reeds and the flowering rushes 
and beautiful flags and sedges and waterside vegetation such as 
grows near the brooks by which we love to walk in our country 
rambles. This mother prayed with all her heart to the Lord that 
her dear child's life might be saved. Her prayers were heard by 
God, and He took compassion on her and her babe. 

The child's little sister stood watching from afar. She could 
not bear to have her little brother left like that all alone. She 
waited to see what was going to happen to him. There she stands. 
Look at the picture of her in her blue frock, with wistful eyes and 
open ears fixed in deepest attention. 

It came to pass just that very day on which this little baby had 
been put into the water that the king's daughter came down with 
her maids to bathe in the river Nile. The princess was walking on 
the banks of the river; she saw the ark, and one of her maids 
went to fetch it. When she opened it she saw the child, and the 
babe wept. She had compassion on him, and immediately guessed 
that this must be one of the Hebrew babies. And now came the 
devoted little sister's chance of making herself useful. Up she 
went to the princess and said : 'Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of 
the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And 
Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and 
called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, 
Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee 
thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it' (Exodus 

We have here another example of the Lord's care of and good- 
ness to all such as put their trust in Him. This Hebrew mother 
was no exception. She had placed her confidence in God, and 
prayed to Him, and He had not left her disappointed. God had 
a further purpose in mind in saving this baby's life. We shall 
learn presently what it was. Pharaoh's daughter called this child 
Moses (from an Egyptian word meaning 'son'). The princess 
took the child to live with her, and thus Moses had the splendid 
position of being brought up as an Egyptian prince of the blood 
royal, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, intended by the childless 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 57 

princess to be her father's successor. He received a good educa- 
tion, owing to the advanced position the ancient Egyptians occupied 
in learning and culture. 

He grew up, and when he was old enough to understand, he 
saw that his poor countrymen, the Israelites, were grievously op- 
pressed. Though now an Egyptian prince, he did not hesitate to 
cast in his lot with the enslaved Israelites. One day, having been 
specially provoked, and being very angry, he killed an Egyptian 
because he was beating an Israelite. Moses hid the body in the 
sand, and thought that he had not been seen; but his own coun- 
trymen did not keep the secret, and Pharaoh wanted to take his 
revenge. The life of Moses was in danger, and he had to flee for 
fear of being killed himself. 

The greatness of the sacrifice he made by abandoning his high 
position as an Egyptian prince to succour his suffering fellow- 
tribesmen can scarcely be over-estimated. He gave up everything 
that makes life pleasant to try to rescue a horde of slaves, and weld 
them into a nation. And the slaves were not even grateful. He 
fled from Eg>'pt, and took refuge in the land of Midian, and he 
sat down by a well, and there he met the seven daughters of Jethro, 
the priest of Midian, who came to draw water, and to fill the drink- 
ing troughs for their father's flocks. Some shepherds came and 
wanted to drive them' away, but Moses stood up and helped them, 
and watered their sheep. On this account they got back sooner 
than they otherwise would have- done, and they told their father 
how an Egyptian had helped them. He said. Where is he? Why 
have you left the man? Why did you not bring him to eat bread 
with us? And they fetched Moses, and he was content to dwell 
with Jethro, and Jethro gave him his daughter Zipporah for a 
wife. 

In Exodus iii. we read: 'Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro 
his father in law, the priest of Midian : and he led the flock to the 
backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even 
to H'oreb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a 
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush : and he looked, and behold, 
the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And 
Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the 
bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to 
see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, 
Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said. Draw not 
nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am 
the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and 



58 ' ALL HAIL ' 

the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to 
look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction 
of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason 
of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorrows ; and I am come 
dov/n to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to 
bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, 
unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the 
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, 
and the Hivites, and the Jebusites Come now there- 
fore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring 
forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. 

'And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto 
Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of 
Egypt?' iH'e was the meekest and humblest of men, and had no 
faith in himself. He thought he would not be able to do so great 
a thing as this. God encouraged him and said, 'Certainly I will be 
with thee' (verse 12). Moses asked God what he was to say to 
the children of Israel in order that they should know that he 
had God's authority with him. 

Verse 14: 'And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and 
he said. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM 
hath sent me unto you .... Thus shalt thou say unto the 
children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of 
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me 
unto you : this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto 
all generations,' God's name — I AM — means that He alone truly 
exists. 

Because Moses still remained fearful, the Lord showed him 
miracles. In his hand he carried a rod. This was turned into 
a serpent, then it was changed back again into a rod. Moses was 
in perfect health ; but in a minute his hand became white as snow 
with leprosy, and immediately after it became again as his other 
flesh, Te Lord enabled Moses himself to perform wonders, in or- 
der to impress on the Israelites that he was the man chosen by 
God to lead them. He came down from the mountain and went 
to his father-in-law, and said that he was going to Egypt, He took 
his wife and children and departed, bent on releasing his brethren 
from' their bondage in Egypt. God had told Moses that it would 
be no easy task for him to persuade Pharaoh to let the children of 
Israel go, and that He would have occasion to visit this dbstinate 
king with plagues. The Bible speaks of God 'hardening Pharaoh's 
heart.' This strikes us as needing explanation. We have heard 
and seen that God is Love. We ask ourselves how is it possible 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 59 

then that the God of Love should harden anybody's heart. It puz- 
zles us, and we feel convinced that it is necessary that we should 
put the right meaning into this statement. God wishes us to have 
tender hearts; to be kind and forgiving. We must plainly under- 
stand what is meant by a hardening of the heart. The explana- 
tion is this : 

The Old Testam.ent writers saw God as the ultimate cause of 
everything; and when it is said that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, 
nothing more is meant than that God is the ultimate cause of this, 
as of everything good and bad. Yet Pharaoh was the immediate 
cause of the hardening of his own heart by the misuse of the free 
will which God gives to every one, which free will involves the im- 
mediate responsibility of the person who makes the choice, for the 
choice made. It is thus equally true to say that God hardened 
Pharaoh's heart, and to say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. 

Pharaoh refused again and again to allow the Israelites to leave 
his country. They were very useful to him and he was a selfish 
tyrant. The Lord sent ten plagues upon Egypt, one after the 
other. Frogs, and flies, and lice, and locusts came in such numbers 
that it was difficult to see the light, and impossible to live under 
such conditions. The river was turned into blood, probably owing 
to some red vegetable growth, so runs the story of marvels in 
Exodus, so that there was no water to drink, either for man or for 
beast. All the cattle died of a grievous murrain. While all these 
direful things were happening to the Egyptians, the Israelites were 
safe. Pharaoh consulted all his wise men and magicians. Nat- 
urally his wish was to prevent all these plagues, but he found him- 
self powerless ; none of his wisest men could top God from carrying 
out His Will. The king saw himself obliged in his predicament 
to appeal for help to Moses, whose God alone, as he was made to 
see, was able to work great marvels or miracles, and remove all 
the trouble He had sent. 

This state of affairs continued for some time. Pharaoh promised 
to allow the Israelites to go, and the plague ceased. As soon as 
the plague ceased he broke his word, and a new plague was sent. 
The Israelites were detained and detained in Egypt, and during 
all this time the Lord sent down to Moses more and more power 
and authority. It was the Lord's intention to prove to Pharaoh, to 
prove to the Egyptians, and to prove to the Israelites how futile 
it was for anybody to try to persist in any course against the Will 
of God. 

The last visitation that was sent on Egypt was the most dis- 
tressing of all. It was the plague of the firstborn. God decreed 



6o ' ALL HAIL ' 

that on a certain night the eldest son of every Egyptian was to 
die. Of Israelite children not one was to be touched, but all were 
to be preserved. A great cry of sorrow went up out of the land 
of Egypt. At last, when his own firstborn son had died with the 
rest, the king realised the extent of his foly. Meanwhile the Lord 
had commanded Moses to tell the Israelites to take for each family 
a lamb, one without blemish; to kill it, and to strike the blood of 
the lamb, as an offering to God and an atonement for those within 
the house, on their doorposts. By their doing this the Lord, when 
He passed by, would know that such a house belonged to an 
obedient Israelite. He would 'pass over' that house and not touch 
any child who lived therein. This is therefore called the Lord's 
passover. A feast was to be held. The flesh of the lamb was to be 
roasted and to be eaten in haste before they went forth out of 
Egypt, as Moses had told them after the plague of the firstborn, 
and this ordinance was to be kept year by year, in gratitude for 
their deliverance. They were also commanded to eat only a par- 
ticular kind of bread, prepared without leaven — which was regarded 
as corrupt because it produces fermentation — and therefore called 
unleavened bread. 

At last the time had come when the Israelites were enabled to de- 
part out of Egypt. In our picture we see them all very busy 
packing up and fastening all their packages and bundles, and 
making ready. They had lived in Egypt for four hundred and 
thirty years. The Lord took the Israelites under the shadow of 
His wing. He became their Leader. It was He who showed them 
their way through all their wanderings in the wilderness, and in 
their passage through the Red Sea. He gave them a sign of His 
own. By day He gave a pillar of cloud, which by night He made 
a pillar of fire. Whenever the pillar of cloud or fire moved and 
indicated to the Israelites the direction where to go, they followed. 

After the Israelites had left Egypt, Pharaoh regretted he had al- 
lowed them to go, and decided to pursue them. When they saw 
the king and his horses and chariots gaining on them, they were 
terrified. This was only natural, but, fortunately for them, there 
was no cause for alarm. They were safe in God's keeping. He 
who does wonders came to their rescue, and His Strength sufficed 
to bring safety to His chosen people, and disaster to their enemies. 
They were on the shore of the Red Sea. The Lord caused a 
mighty wind from the north-east to blow, which drove back the 
waters of the sea. The Israelites walked across the sands thus 
laid bare, and Pharaoh, seeing them landed safely on the other 
side, thought it possible to follow. The Lord willed it otherwise. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 6t 

No sooner was this proud king with all his army, all his men, and 
all his horses and chariots well in the middle of the bed of the 
Red Sea, than the Lord changed the direction of the wind, and 
instead of blowing back the water the wind blew the water straight 
upon them. Thus Pharaoh, his host, and his horses, and his 
chariots were overwhelmed in the sea. 

This Pharaoh is identified with Merenptah, the discovery of 
whose mummy has raised a discussion as to the accuracy of Exodus. 
The explanation is that the King either escaped from the catas- 
trophe, or more probably, remained on the shore and sent his 
troops into the sea. 

Chapter xv : 'Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this 
song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, 
for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he 
is become m:y salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an 
habitation (R.V., praise him) : my father's God, and I will exalt 
him.' 

On this occasion the Book of Exodus mentions Moses' sister 
Miriam. She had remained with her brother, and we read that she 
was a prophetess. The Bible says, she 'took a timbrel in her hand; 
and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with 
dances. And Miriam answered them: Sing ye to the Lord, for he 
hath triumijphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath he 
thrown into the sea.' (Exodus xv. 20.) 

Here we will look at three pictures, all about events we read of 
in the life of Moses ; part of which we have read about already, 
part of which we still have to read of. You will see the well in 
Midian, and two of the daughters of the priest feeding their flocks ; 
you will see Moses killing the Egyptian; you will see the Lord 
handing him the Commandment tables on Mount Sinai ; you will 
see the wicked Israelites worshipping the golden calf; you will 
see Moses throwing down the precious tables in his wrathful indig- 
nation at such idolatry. Some of these pictures are most beautiful. 
People come from far-distant lands, from all the different quarters 
of the earth, to see the originals and to enjoy them. Once seen 
they can never be forgotten. 



CHAPTER V. 

Exodus xv. 22 — Leviticus — Numbers — Deuteronomy — Joshua xxiv. 
28 (Moses and Joshua). 

Exodus xv. verse 22, begins : 'So Moses brought Israel from 
the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur 
. . . . and found no water .... they could not drink of 
the waters of Marah, for they were bitter : therefore the name of it 
was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, say- 
ing, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord; and the 
Lord shewed him a tree.' This (probably the bark and leaves) 
was thrown into the brackish water and it became sweet, so that 
they could use it for drinking purposes. God told the Israelites 
that if they would 'diligently hearken' (verse 26) unto His Voice, 
and do that which was right in His sight, and would give ear to 
His commandments, and keep His statutes, He would keep them 
all in His care. 

They came next to a place called Elim (trees), an oasis where 
were twelve wells, or water-holes, in the sand, and three score 
and ten palm trees, and they encamped at this well-watered place. 
Then they took their journey from Elim and came to the wilder- 
ness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai. This was the fif- 
teenth day of the second month after they had left Egypt. The 
Israelites began murmuring about something else now. They were 
great grumblers — never satisfied. They began regretting that they 
had left the flesh pots of Egypt. 'We remember the fish which 
we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers and the melons, and the 
leeks, and the onions, and the garlick' (Numbers xi. 5). Wliere, 
they said, is the sense of dying in the wilderness first from thirst 
and then from hunger ? Exodus xvi. verse 4 : 'Then said the Lord 
unto Moses, Behold I will rain bread from heaven for you ; and 
the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I 
may prove them whether they will walk in my law or no.' 

iGod wanted to be obeyed, in order to discipline them into a 
nation of which He, the unseen Lord, would be King, and He 
wished to teach them by experience to trust H'im completely. Be- 
sides His giving to the children of Israel manna for bread, the 
same chapter tells of His giving quails, which came in by night, 

62 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 63 

just as flights of quails do in the same desert country to-day. 
Verse 13: 'And it came to pass that at even the quails came up, 
and covered the camp ; and in the morning the dew lay round about 
the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon 
the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as 
the hoar frost on the ground.' 

Manna was the name given to the bread God rained down from 
Heaven. When the manna fell, the children of Israel exclaimed 
in Hebrew, Man Hu, which means in English, What is this ? or, 
What is it? And our book of Exodus continues (verse 31), 
'And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna : and it 
was like coriander seed, white ; and the taste of it was like wafers 
made with honey.' See how the Israelites in our picture are all 
busy picking up this precious food, and filling their pots and pans 
with it. 

Exodus xvii. commences by saying that all the congregation of 
the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin to 
Rephidim, and pitched there. At this place the same thing hap- 
pened as before. They found no water, and again there were mur- 
murings and discontent. The Lord stood by Moses, and came 
to his aid. He said (Exodus xvii. verse 5) : 'Go on before the 
people, and take thee of the elders of Israel ; and thy rod .... 

take in thine hand Behold I will stand before thee 

upon the rock of H'oreb ; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there 
shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses 

did so in the sight of the elders of Israel Then came 

Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim.' 

Moses told his lieutenant Joshua to choose men to fight the 
Amalekites. This was the beginning of the desert training by 
which God willed to harden a crowd of soft and self-indulgent 
slaves into a body of iron fighting men, fit to cope with and to 
conquer the giant warriors of Canaan. The Israelites overcame 
on this occasion by the aid of Moses, who had his hands upheld and 
supported by Aaron and Hur. Moses, guided by Jethro his fath- 
er-in-law, who had come and joined him, now arranged all manner 
of work that had to be attended to amongst the Israelites. They 
organized everything, and chose men to help them, of whom 
Jethro said they were to be 'able men, such as fear God; men of 
truth, hating covetousness' (Exodus xviii. 21). 

We see how careful they were as to the characters of the men 
they selected. Everything was put in its proper place, and there 
was no hurry or bustle. All was attended to quietly, and with 
true Eastern dignity. The Israelites wandered on, and came to 



64 ' ALL HAIL ' 

the wilderness of Sinai. They were led by God, and the words the 
Book of Exodus uses are: 'Ye have seen what I did unto the 
Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you 
unto myself. Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and 
keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me 
above all people: for all the earth is mine' (Exodus xix. 4). 

At this early stage of the national life of the Israelites, they 
seemed most anvious to obey all God's wishes and commandments. 
Moses now received further orders. Exodus xix. verse 9 : 'The 
Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that 
the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for 
ever.' 

The people were told to observe certain purifications in order 
to sanctify themselves before receiving the Lord's awe-inspiring 
revelation of Himself in the Ten Commandments. They were to 
be ready against the third day. 

In Exodus xix. verse 16, we read : 'And it came to pass on the 
third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, 
and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet ex- 
ceeding loud: so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. 
And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with 
God. And they stood at the nether part of the mount. And 
mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord de- 
scended upon it in fire : and the smoke thereof ascended as the 
smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And 
when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder 
and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him by a voice. And 
the Lord came down upon mount Sinai on the top of the mount ; 
and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount ; and Moses 
went up.' 

Exodus XX. verse i : 'And God spake all these words, saying, I 
am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, 
out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me' (better, 'beside me'). 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, 
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the 
earth.' As the first Commandment taught monotheism, the second, 
forbidding images, taught that God is a Spirit. Then follow the 
remainder of the Ten Commandments, or Ten Words, which sum 
up man's duty to God and to his neighbour, not forgetting the 
animals. 

Then follows a list of laws, such as laws to regulate the treatment 
of slaves. It was, moreover, forbidden to make any images at all, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 65 

whether gold or silver. The Israelites were ordered to worship the 
One and Only God. The Unity and exclusive Sovereignty of 
God were insisted upon. The prohibition of images was intended to 
help them against their strong innate tendency to idolatry, brought 
from their ancestral home across the Euphrates, and further fos- 
tered by their long sojourn in Egypt. Amongst other things, it 
was impressed upon the Israelites always to be kind to strangers, 
to show hospitality, and share their own with others. 

To everything the Israelites answered with one voice, and said : 
'All the words which the Lord hath said will we do. And Moses 
wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morn- 
ing, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according 

to the twelve tribes of Israel And he took the book of 

the covenant, and read in the audience of the people; and they said, 
All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.' (Exodus 
xxiv. verses 3, 4, 7.) 

Exodus xxiv. verse 18 : 'And Moses went into the midst of the 

cloud and Moses was in the mount forty days and 

forty nights.' 

We read next that the Lord commanded the children of Israel to 
bring offerings, and this had to be done with a willing heart. The 
Israelites were to bring gold and silver, and brass and blue and 
purple and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, rams' skins 
and badgers' skins (seal skins, R.V.) ; oil for light, and spices for 
sweet incense. All manner of precious stones and gems, and 
beautiful wood. And all these things were required as materials 
for the Tabernacle, which was to be made according to the Lord's 
own pattern and instruction, as His visible dwelling-place, so that 
His invisible Presence could be easily realised by all among them. 

The Israelites were to make an ark or chest of shittim' wood, i.e,, 
acacia, the wood which grows in the desert; and this was to be 
overlaid with gold. And into this ark was to be put, as the most 
sacred revelation of an all-holy God, the Testimony or moral law 
which the Lord had given them. Two cherubims of gold (per- 
sonifications of the storm winds) were to be at the two ends of 
the mercy seat of gold, that throne of God where the people's 
sins were covered or forgiven. The wings of the cherubims were 
to be stretched forth on high, so as to cover it. Then there was 
to be a candlestick or lampstand of pure gold, with branches and 
beautiful ornamentation. One seven-branched lampstand was to be 
made to give light. Also there were to be tongs and snuff dishes, 
and beautiful things that were necessary for the use and the beauti- 
fying of this place of worship. The Tabernacle was ordered to be 



66 ' ALL HAIL ' 

made of beautiful wood, and there were to be curtains all embroid- 
ered in blue and purple and scarlet, and these were to be suspended 
from lovely pillars, and the tent was to have a door with hang- 
ings. There was also an altar, and there was to be an outer court. 
Over the Mercy Seat in the innermost part of the Tabernacle, there 
was continually a bright, shining light, which the Bible calls the 
Shekinah, and this was the outward and visible sign of the Lord's 
presence among the Israelites. We turn to our Bible, Exodus 
xxxi. verse 17, and read : 'It is a sign between me and the children 
of Israel for ever .... and he gave unto Moses, when he 
had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two 
tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God.' 

These precious commandment tables were kept in the Taber- 
nacle, i.e., 'the dwelling' of God. In the Holy of Holies was placed 
the Ark of the Covenant. Wherever the Israelites went, they took 
with them their Tabernacle. It was their most precious posses- 
sion. It was built somewhat in the shape of a tent, and could 
easily be taken down and built up again like the other tents the 
Israelites lived in. This Tabernacle was the forerunner of King 
Solomon's Temple, which we shall read about later on. 

We have mentioned Moses' brother Aaron. He and his sons 
were priests, and wore beautiful robes. All the details of these 
are most vividly desrcibed in different chapters of Exodus. 

In Exodus xxxii. we are told that when the people saw that 
Moses delayed coming down out of the mount, the people gath- 
ered themselves together and complained to Aaron, and said that 
it was no use their waiting any longer for Moses. They said. We 
will make us a golden calf (a memory of the Egyptian religious 
customs, or possibly of the Babylonian) and worship that. The 
Bible goes on to say that the women took off their golden ear- 
rings and ornaments, and that thus this idol was fashioned. When 
completed, they danced around it, and we know how wicked it 
was of them, because we remember distinctly that the Lord had 
just forbidden them, as He forbids us all, to worship idols. 

Exodus xxxii. verse 15 : 'And Moses turned and went down from 
the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand ; 
the tables were written on both their sides. . . . And the 
tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of 
God, graven upon the tables. . . . And it came to pass as soon 
as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the 
dancing; and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out 
of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took 
the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 67 

It to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children 
of Israel drink of it.' 

Moses bitterly reproached Aaron for allowing such things to 
happen in his absence. Aaron answered: Thou knowest the peo- 
ple that they are set on mischief (verse 22), and he went on to 
make a weak excuse, alleging compulsion and accident, 'then I 
cast it (the gold) into the fire, and there came out this calf.' 

The Lord called the Israelites a wicked and stiff-necked na- 
tion. Many fell in battle because the Lord hid His face and favour 
from them. Moses pleaded for the Lord's forgiveness, and in- 
terceded for his people. And God, who is full of goodness and 
mercy, and abundant in patience, heard Moses' prayers. Moses 
took the Tabernacle and pitched it without the camp. Every man 
was at his own tent door, and looked after Moses as he went into 
the Tabernacle. 

Exodus xxxiii. verse 9: 'And it came to pass, as Moses entered 
into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the 
door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all 
the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door : and 
all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. 
And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh 
unto his friend. . . . And Moses said . . . Now therefore, 
I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy 
way, that I may know thee . . . and consider that this na- 
tion is thy people. . . . And he said, Thou canst not see my 
face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the Lord said, 
Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock : 
and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will 
put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand 
while I pass by : and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt 
see my back parts : but my face shall not be seen.' This repre- 
sents a spiritual experience, and is not to be taken literally. 

Exodus xxxiv. verses i, 2, 5 : 'And the Lord said unto Moses, 
Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write 
upon these tables the words that were in the first tabks, which 
thou brakest. And be ready in the morning, and come up in the 
morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the 
top of the mount. . . . And the Lord descended in the cloud, 
and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 
And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, 
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abun- 
dant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, for- 
giving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no 



68 ' ALL HAIL ' 

means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children.' 

We find in life that the people who do evil are not always the 
ones who suffer most from the evil consequences; that it is more 
often the ones who are innocent of wrongdoing, and even little 
children unto the third and fourth generation who will have to 
suffer for the sins which their forefathers have committed. This 
is not because our Lord is unjust. This is because nobody can 
ever do anything, good or bad, to himself or to herself alone. We 
live in a world full of other people, and whatever we do affects 
somebody else. If we do the right thing, we not only keep our 
own account clear, but we are the means of helping a fellow crea- 
ture. If we sin, somebody else is made to suffer, and this is often 
a person who is absolutely innocent. Now I hope we have made 
this passage, which has perplexed people sometimes, more easy 
to understand. 

We left Moses on the Mount with the Lord appearing to him, 
though not of course a visible appearance, for we must remember 
as an eternal truth that *no man hath seen God at any time' (John 
i. i8), for 'God is a spirit' 

Exodus xxxiv. verses 8, lo : 'And Moses made haste, and bowed 
his head toward the earth, and worshipped. . . . And he said, 
Behold, I make a covenant : before all thy people I will do mar- 
vels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any na- 
tion: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work 
of the Lord.' 

The Lord promised the Israelites to drive out before them all 
their enemies — the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the 
Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, And the Lord was 
most emphatic in His message to Moses that the Israelites should 
destroy all the altars, should break all the images and cut down 
all the groves which belonged to these idol worshippers. We 
know that the Lord is a jealous God — jealous only for our highest 
good, which is exclusive devotion to Himself. 

Here we have the instruction given by God Himself through 
Moses to the Israelites. It was their most sacred duty to fight 
against the false gods, and instead to proclaim the one and only 
God. This teaching has its parallel in the New Testament, when 
Christ declares to His disciples that they are to go forth and 
make Him known as the Saviour of all the world, whom all man- 
kind shall accept. The Lord made Moses write down all His 
divine words. And Moses was with the Lord forty days and forty 
nights, in which time he neither ate bread nor drank water. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 69 

Exodus xxxiv. verse 29: 'And it came to pass, when Moses 
came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony 
in Moses' hand . . . that Moses wist not that the skin of his 
face shone. . . . And Moses called unto them; and Aaron 
and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him . . . 
and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken 
with him in Mount Sinai. And till (R.V. when) Moses had done 
speaking with them he put a vail on his face.' 

The Bible tells us about Bezaleel and Ahoiiab, gifted artists, in 
whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding to know how to 
work all manner of beautiful things for the service of the sanc- 
tuary. Anj?^ work done can be inspired by God if we give our- 
selves to Him as His instruments. One really feels that the old 
Italians must have received into their hearts a great amount of 
similar wisdom, because their beautiful works of art seem to be 
inspired by the Spirit of God, so much of what they wrought was 
done unto the Lord, and that is why their works are not for a 
season but for ever. 

Our reading of the Book of Exodus is drawing to a close. We 
read that when the making of the holy garments and the holy 
furniture was completed and the Tabernacle upreared and con- 
secrated, as God commanded Moses, Moses offered the first daily 
sacrifice as the Lord commanded him, and the glory of the Lord 
filled the Tabernacle. 

Just before passing on it behoves us here to say that in Exo- 
dus we find the record of the foundation of the constitution which 
made of Israel a united people, and one separate and different 
from all those around them. God spake : 'Israel is my son, even 
my first-born' (Exodus iv. verse 22). While in Genesis we read 
of individual members of a family, in Exodus we read about the 
transformation of a tribe or tribes, which were rescued from bond- 
age in Egypt, into a nation. At the Red Sea we find a nation 
not yet fully born, rejoicing in its deliverance, with thanksgivings 
uppermost in its heart, as well as hope for the future, and at 
Sinai we see the same nation consecrated by the Covenant. The 
law was intended to form' them into a holy nation, and thus they 
were to be a foreshadowing of the high calling of the Christian 
Church as described in the New Testament. 

We now come to the third book of the Pentateuch, called Le- 
viticus, after the Levites. It is really a manual of ceremonial di- 
rections for priests and worshippers. The Levites were the 
priestly tribe among the twelve, and distinguished for fidelity and 
disinterestedness. In remembrance of God's mercy at the time 



70 'ALL HAIL' 

of the Passover, on which occasion we recall that all the Hebrew 
firstborn had been spared, the Levites, the whole tribe of them, 
were specially appointed for the services of the Tabernacle. They 
became the priests who had to attend to all the offices in the 
Tabernacle of the Lord. The priestly tribe was probably devel- 
oped through the influence and position of Moses, himself a Le- 
vite, and the chief minister of the Sanctuary. The traditions of 
the priesthood and of the public worship passed down to his 
descendants. The ancient tribe of Levi had broken up long be- 
fore, and the new priestly tribe took its real origin from Moses. 
The Book of Leviticus falls into several clear-cut parts: (i) The 
Law of Sacrifice (chapters i.-vii.). (2) The Consecration of the 
Priesthood (chapters viii.-x.). (3) The Law of Clean and Un- 
clean (chapters xi.-xvi.). (4) The Law of Holiness, with the 
Sabbatical Year, and the Year of Jubilee, from juhel, the ram's- 
horn trumpet blown on the Day of Atonement, when the year 
began (chapters xvii.-xxvi.). 

The Israelite nation was only newly-born, or in its childhood. 
Everybody alike has to start at the very beginning and must be 
sure to lay a good and firm foundation. We begin the lesson of 
life when we are young, and go on learning to the day of our 
death. 

The fourth book of the Bible, which is the fourth division of 
the Pentateuch, is called Numbers. It is easy to find out why. 
It comes from the two numberings of the children of Israel, one 
near the beginning and one near the end of the wanderings in the 
wilderness. They were numbered in order that Moses might know 
how many people he had to look after. Moses had a large fam- 
il}'- to train for the Promised Land. The different tribes of Israel 
were stationed at different places around the Tabernacle. In the 
sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, verses 24-26, Aaron is di- 
rected by God through Moses to give a very beautiful blessing 
indeed to the children of Israel : 'The Lord bless thee, and keep 
thee : the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious 
unto thee : the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give 
thee peace.' 

You see that God remains always the same. He speaks to you 
and to me, just as He did in the days of old to the Israelites. He 
alone is always right. Is it not the greatest possible comfort to 
us to know that all of us are always in His loving care, and 
whether we live or whether we die it is unto Him? 

In the first few years of the desert life of the Israelites the 
Lord had been willing to send them v/ithout much delay into the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 71 

Promised Land, but Lhe misdeeds of the people and their want of 
staunchness of character induced the Lord to postpone this step. 
He spoke unto Moses, and said (Numbers xiii. verse 2) : 'Send 
thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan . . . o^ 
every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler 
among them. And Moses . . . sent them froi. the wilder- 
ness of Paran , . . and Moses sent them' to spy oat the land 
of Canaan . . . and go up into the mountain : and see the 
land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether 
they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that 
they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they 
be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strong holds; and 
what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood 
therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, and bring of the 
fruit of the land. Now the time was the time of the firstripe 
grapes. So they went up and searched the land from the wilder- 
ness of Zin unto Rehob. . . . And they ascended by the south, 
and came unto Hebron ; ... and they came unto the brook 
of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster 
of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they 
brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs. . . . And they 
returned from searching of the land after forty days.' So huge 
was the bunch of grapes that to avoid crushing it, it had to be 
hung from a staff carried by two strong men. 

They reported that the country certainly was overflowing with 
milk and honey, a conventional expression tO' describe its rich- 
ness; nevertheless the people who dwelt there were strong, and 
the cities walled and very great. The Amalekites dwelt in the 
south; the Hittites and the Jebusites by the sea and on one side 
of Jordan. Caleb and Joshua were for going up at once to pos- 
sess the land. Both were brave soldiers, and they said that the 
Israelites had it in them to conquer the Canaanites. But the 
other men were timid. They reported evil. They said that the 
people were giants, sons of Anak, and far too strong for them to 
fight. 'We are all but as grasshoppers' in comparison, they said. 
Joshua and Caleb believed in God's promise, and the other ten 
spies did not. Thus it came about that once more the Israelites 
murmured and blamed Moses, and were eager to stone Joshua 
and Caleb. The glory of the Lord appeared m the Tabernacle. 
The Lord said to Moses, He wondered how long the children of 
Israel would think fit to provoke His anger; how many more 
signs they would require before they believed in H'im. The Lord 
said He would smite them all with a pestilence. Moses prayed 



72 'ALL HAIL' 

for forgiveness for the Israelites, and God made a compact with 
them. To the people He said (Numbers xiv. verse 30) : 'Doubt- 
less ye shall not come into the land concerning which I swear to 
make you dwell therein, save Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and 
Joshua, the son of Nun. But your little ones . . . them will 
I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.' 

Numbers xx. verse i : 'Then came the children of Israel, even 
the whole congregation into the desert of Zin in the first month ; 
and the people abode in Kadesh ; and Miriam died there, and was 
buried there.' 

Once again there were more faithless complainings on the part 
of the Israelites on account of having no water. It is certainly 
hard to have nothing to drink, but we feel that by this time they 
really ought to have put their trust in God, who always provided 
for all their needs. 

Verse 9: 'Moses took the rod from before the Lord as he com- 
manded him. . . . And Moses lifted up his hand, and with 
his rod he smote the rock twice, and the water came out abun- 
danth^ and the congregation drank and their beasts also.' 

The Lord reproved Moses severely for having struck the rock 
twice instead of once. Moses had lost his temper. As he was 
the chosen leader of the Israelites, the Lord expected him to 
exercise more control over himself so as to set a good example. 
Great as he was, he failed here, and a punishment had to be meted 
out to him. His punishment was that the Lord would not allow 
him to bring the people to their destination in the land of prom- 
ise. One cannot but feel extremely sorry for Moses, who had 
done wonderful work in carrying out God's purpose, and weld- 
ing a horde of slaves into a nation. 

Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, 
asking him to give permission to the Israelites to pass through 
his kingdom in peace. Moses assured the king that the Israelites 
would not pass through his fields, nor through the vineyards be- 
longing to his people, nor would they drink the water of the wells. 
Moses promised that the Israelites would remain on the regular 
caravan track, but the king of Edom would not trust them, and 
so the children of Israel had to turn away and proceed on their 
journey by another route. They came across the Canaanites, who 
lived east of Jordan. These had to be fought against, and were 
defeated by the Israelites. No sooner was this accomplished than 
again discontent arose. The Lord sent a plague of fiery serpents 
('fiery^ means, whose bite caused fatal inflammation) among the 
people, which bit them, so that many died. This time they ac- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 73 

knowledged their sin before the Lord, who took compassion on 
them. He commanded Moses to put a brazen serpent on the 
top of a long pole. All people who looked with faith upon that 
v/ere to be cured. Mothers might hold up their dying children's 
faces to this brazen serpent, and thus seek deliverance. A son 
might raise up his stricken father, and thus help him to recover 
health and strength. 

In this connection let us remember our Saviour's words. When 
He was on earth He alluded to this very thing. He said that 
just in the same way as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wil- 
derness in the sight of all, so that whoever looked on that, man, 
woman, or child, should be healed of the poison of the serpent- 
bite, just so He Himself would be lifted up on the cross in order 
that whoever looked with faith unto Him should be saved from the 
death caused by the poison of sin. On this account did our 
Heavenly Father send down to us His only beloved Son Jesus 
Christ, to die for us and to save us. Wonderful indeed was the 
cure God provided for the children of Isarel. But think of our 
cure in comparison! Think what we are given at God's hands, 
and by willingness of His only Son, perfect spiritual health, 
that is, salvation for our souls. 

V/e read of so many places that the Israelites touched upon in 
their wanderings that we can hardly remember their names. One, 
however, let us try and fix in our memory. In the country of 
Moab there is a mountain called Pisgah. We shall hear all about 
this presently in connection with Moses. The Israelites fought 
many kings amongst others Sihon and Og, and their people, the 
Amorites and the Bashanites, both of whom they smote, and then 
took possession of their lands. The Israelites pitched in the plain 
of Moab, on this side of Jordan, by Jericho. This was the kingdom 
of Balak, the son of Zippor. Balak saw all the havoc the Israelites 
had wrought to other countries and kingdoms of Canaan. Nat- 
urally, Balak, king of Moab, and his people did not relish the idea 
of the Israelites coming their way. They were sore afraid of them. 
Balak was a heathen, like all except the chosen people. Balak sent 
messengers unto one of the famous soothsayers called Balaam, the 
son of Beor, to a place called Pethor, far away by the river Eu- 
phrates. The king asked Balaam to curse the children of Israel. 
The soothsayer answered that before doing this he first desired to 
consult the Lord's wishes, so as to ascertain what it was he was 
required to do in this matter. Now Balaam was also a heathen, 
but a power was working within him which was put into his heart 
by God. All this was but half-known to Balaam himself, but so 



jd, * ALL HAIL ' 

strong was God's spirit in him that he simply could not go against 
this inner voice. In spite of himself he had to act in accordance 
with it. The Lord forbade Balaam to curse the children of Israel. 
This was told to King Balak, who was disappointed and furious at 
being disobeyed. 

He sent more messengers, and offered richer gifts, gold and sil- 
ver, to Balaam. In other words, Balak tried his hardest to persuade 
Balaam to do his will. Nothing availed. Balaam would have liked 
to take Balak's gifts if he could have got them without openly dis- 
obeying God. Again and again Balak tried to win Balaam. He 
declared that he would take no refusal from anybody, except from 
Balaam himself. The latter now saw himself forced, really though 
only half-consciously by his own greed, to set out on a journey to 
King Balak. On the way the Lord sent an angel to meet Balaam. 
We are told that he himself could not see this angel. 

'The ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his 
sword drawn in his hand; and the ass turned aside out of the way 
and went into the field, and Balaam smote the ass to turn her into 
the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, 
a wall being on this side and a wall on that side. And when the 
ass saw the angel of the Lord she thrust herself unto the wall and 
crushed Balaam's foot against the wall, and h( imote her again. 
And the angel of the Lord went further and stood in a narrow 
place where there was no way to turn either to the right hand or 
to the left. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord she fell 
down under Balaam, and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he 
smote the ass with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth of the 
ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee that 
thou hast smitten me these three times? And Balaam said unto 
the ass. Because thou hast mocked me ; I would there were a sword 
in my hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto 
Balaam', Am I not thy ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since 
I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee? 
And he said. Nay. Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, 
^nd he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his 
sword drawn in his hand, and he bowed down his head and fell 
flat on his face.' (Numbers xxii. verse 23.) 

This is an interesting example of the dramatic way in which the 
Hebrews described their religious experience. Of course, God's 
power to do anything is not questioned; the question is whether 
the story is meant to be taken literally or not. If not taken liter- 
ally, the lesson is just the same. The ass may have been silent, and 
yet to Balaam's conscience the silence may have been loud with 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 75 

spiritual speech. Dealing with the story of Balaam and his ass, 
the present Bishop of London writes: 'On any explanation, the 
account of this warning apparition must have come from' Balaam, 
as no one else was present, and he, as the Speaker's Commentary 
suggests, may, as an augur, have given a meaning according to his 
art, to the natural sounds of the ass just, as the augtirs at Rome 
gave a meaning to the noise of the geese on the Capitol. No wonder 
at such a time that the sounds took a warning tone to his uneasy 
conscience.' 

Balaam felt he had sinned, and asked the angel of the Lord for 
forgiveness, but he was told to proceed on his journey with the 
princes of Balak. He was told by the angel, 'Only the word that 
I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak.' 

Balaam blessed Israel, for his eyes were open, for he saw God's 
will clearly, and felt the compulsion of God's, spirit. In spite of 
Balak's indignant remonstrances, Balaam^ whom he had brought 
to curse Israel, blessed the nation again and again. King Balak 
was indeed forced to admit that he was absolutely powerless to 
resist God's Will. The Lord's Blessing rested on Israel ; King 
Balak was not permitted in any way to harm them. God's anger 
rested on Balaam because he did all he could, and all he dared, 
to assist the king of Moab against Israel. Though his lips were 
lo5^al, his heart was disloyal to the Lord. 

The Bible now tells us of the death of Aaron, that faithful 
brother of Moses, who had followed him in all his wanderings. 

Numbers xx. verse 28 : 'And Moses stripped Aaron of his gar- 
ments, and put them' upon Eleaza^-his son ; and Aaron died there in 
the top of the mount : and Moses and Eleazar came down from the 
mount.' Not long after this time Moses received from the Lord 
the news of his own approaching death, and of the appointment of 
Joshua as his successor, which he received with characteristic self- 
abnegation. 

The Lord informed the Israelites what were to be their borders 
when they possessed the Promised Land. Also how the twelve 
tribes are to divide the land by lot. Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, 
was not forgotten. Joshua blessed him, and gave him Hebron 
for an inheritance. This was a recompense because he had wholly 
followed the Lord God of Israel. 

The fifth book of the Bible is called Deuteronomy, which means 
a copy or repetition of the law. The plains of Moab are the scene 
of the book. The time is just after the wanderings in the wilder- 
ness, and just before the passage of the Jordan, and the period 
occupied by the book is not more than forty days. The book 



76 ' ALL HAIL ' 

chiefly consists of those discourses spoken by Moses before his 
death, describing the experiences of the forty years, with a final 
section including Moses' charge to Joshua, the Song of Moses, and 
the Blessing of Moses. Writing was employed in Palestine long 
before Moses' time, and there was nothing to prevent the great 
lawgiver of that period from leaving written works, though com- 
pilers may have arranged the documents at a much later date. 
The Book of Deuteronomy is full of Evangelical religion, and is 
frequently quoted by our Lord in a way that argues the highest 
estimate of its religious value. 

In this book Moses repeats all that had happened to the children 
of Israel during the years that he had led them. He impresses 
upon them to seek the Lord. All who earnestly do this shall find 
Him. Everybody is to keep His Commandments. The laws and 
statutes are laid down which are to be observed in the Land of 
Promise. Kindness to animals is enjoined; so is protection of 
strangers. God is a Loving as well as a Just and Righteous God. 
All children are to be taught diligently ; however young they be, 
they are to be told of the Lord God (Jehovah). Young and old 
are to know that the Lord's Commandments are not far removed 
from us, nor too difficult for us to understand ; that, on the con- 
trary, they are quite near to us, even in our own hearts. All of 
us — the Israelites of old, and we of the present day — come upon 
the earth for a little while and then pass away. It is for us all 
alike to learn the same lesson, that God is Love. He has done 
everything for us. In return the Lord asks from us our gratitude 
— our little best. We are not to fear because it is so little : we are 
weak, but God can make us strong. We must put our whole trust 
in Him'. All these things, and many more, are suggested for our 
good by the great book of Deuteronomy. 

In chapter xxxi. verse 2, we read that Moses spake these words 
unto all Israel : 'And he said unto them, I am an hundred and 
twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and come in: 
also the Lord hath said unto me. Thou shalt not go over this 
Jordan.' 

Sadly he remembers his disobedience and hastiness. He urges 
the Israelites to be of good courage ; the Lord has promised to 
take them into the Promised Land, and He never fails nor for- 
sakes. Moses calls upon Joshua to take his place, and to take 
charge of the Israelites. Moses closes his farewell address to 
the children of Israel with a solemn song, which shows him to 
have been a poet as well as a lawgiver. 

We find the song of Moses in Deuteronomy, but of this we can 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE- BIBLE "77 

only give a brief extract (xxxii. lo, ii, 12) : 'He (Jehovah) found 
him {i.e., Israel) in a desert land, and in the waste howling 
wilderness; he led, (R.V. compassed) him about, he instructed him', 
he kept him' as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her 
nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh 
them, beareth them on her wings : so the Lord alone did lead him, 
and there was no strange god with him.' 

At last we draw near to the end of Moses. We read in chapter 
xxxii. verse 48: 'The Lord spake unto Moses .... get thee 
up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the 
land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of 
Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession, 
and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto 
thy people.' And in chapter xxxiv. : 'And Moses went up ... . 

to the top of Pisgah And the Lord showed him all 

the land of Gilead unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of 
Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah unto the ut- 
most sea; and the south and the plain of the valley of Jericho, 
the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him. 
This is the land wliich I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and 
unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed : I have caused thee 
to see it with thine eyes, but shalt not go over thither. So Moses 
the Servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according 
to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the 
land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his 
sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty 
years old when he died : his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
abated. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains 

of Moab thirty days And there arose not a prophet 

since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, 
in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do 
in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to 
all his land, and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great 
terror which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel.' 

And thus all is made plain to us, and we see why the Lord saved 
that helpless baby's life in the pap5Tus ark, just as Joseph's life 
had been saved, each of them saved in order to work God's Will. 

The great work of Moses was the uniting of the tribes in com- 
mon loyalty as one nation, based on a common loyalty to One God. 
Moses was really the founder of the religion of Israel. He com- 
pleted the work of Abraham. Abraham began that religion by his 
discovery that the voice of God could be heard and obeyed by 
the individual. Moses added the discovery that the voice of God 



78 'ALL HAIL' 

could be heard and obeyed by the community, that a nation could 
be a friend of God, as well as a man. In other words, personal 
religion owed most to Abraham; social or corporate religion owed 
most to Moses. Moses showed that religion was necessary for 
the life of a community as Abraham had shown it was necessary 
for the life of a man. 

We ordinary people must not think that the clever people are 
the only ones who are expected to work for God. God has duties 
for all of us; none of us indeed is likely to be chosen to do 
notable things like the great men we read of in the Bible. But the 
Lord speaks to you and to me, and the sooner we understand the 
better that the Lord has put us into this world to do something 
useful in His service. To begin with, we are not to live selfish 
lives ; we are not to think first and only of ourselves. This is dis- 
pleasing to God. The next time we say our prayers, we must 
ask God's blessing and His help that He, our Heavenly Father, 
may be pleased to point out tO' us what it is He wishes us to do. 
We shall receive an answer from Him, we may rest assured. 

Perhaps next day our hearts will lead one of us, at God's dicta- 
<"ion. to visit that hospital we have so often passed by and never 
before thought of entering. Standing at some poor little child's 
bed, we shall see him lying there in pain and suffering. The 
nights are sleepless, and oh! so long, and morning brings no relief. 
Then we shall read him a story^ and tell him something out of this 
book and we shall show him some pictures, the ones we have learned 
to love. We shall become friends and we shall help each other 
to learn God's lessons ; such as patience, unselfishness, gratitude, 
one and all of them most valuable. All of us would be the richer 
and happier for such intercourse. In this way we shall be doing 
just our little best towards God's work, and He will deign to 
accept our gift. Next time we pass a hospital, such as we see 
here in our picture, it will be with thoughts of, and sympathy with, 
the inmates. 

It was God's wish that Moses should put the care of the Israelites 
into the hands of Joshua, the son of Nun, and Joshua was full of 
the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hand on him; and 
the children of Israel hearkened unto him. 

In our reading we have arrived at another book, called Joshua 
after the leader, whose deeds it records. The Book of Joshua is 
sharply separated front the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Canon; it 
heads the Prophets, i.e., the Former Prophets or Historians. It 
describes the conquest of Canaan by the children of Israel. God's 
commands to Joshua were not to look to the right, and not to 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 79 

look to the left, but to go straight forward. 'Be strong and of a 
good courage' was God's message to him. 

The Lord promised to be with him wherever he went and 
wherever he led the Israelites. And the Lord fulfilled His prom- 
ise. Joshua became a celebrated man. He was a great general, 
and led the children of Israel from victory to victory. As a first 
step to crossing the Jordan into Canaan proper, he sent out spies 
to gauge the strength of one of his enemies, the King of Jericho, 
w^hose city was close to the ford of the Jordan. In the mean- 
while he ordered that the wives and the little ones and the cattle 
should all remain behind. The men whom he sent out as spies 
arrived at the town of Jericho. 

At that time there lived a woman in Jericho called Rahab. She 
had not lived a virtuous life, but an opportunity was given to her 
to mend her ways. She became a good woman and believed in 
the Lord. She looked upon the Israelites as being His own 
chosen people. The King of Jericho heard that his country was 
being reconnoitred by the Israelites, and that two spies were 
lodged in the house of Rahab. The King's men tracked them 
there, but Rahab pretended not to know what had become of them, 
and she sent their pursuers on a fool's errand. This was at the 
time of the shutting of the gate of the town, when it was dark. 
She had already brought the spies to the roof of her house and 
had hidden them there under a heap of stalks of flax. 

Meanwhile the King's followers pursued them as far as the ford 
of the Jordan; of course the pursuit was in vain. Rahab confided 
in the Israelite spies, and said that she knew right well that the 
Lord had given the land into their hands, so that terror was upon 
her and her people. All the miracles that the Lord had done 
for the children of Israel had come to the ears of her people. She 
begged the Israelites to do her a favour and to swear that as she 
had shown them' kindness, they would show kindness to her and 
her house. She asked for the lives of her father and mother, 
brothers, and sisters. The spies agreed to this. Then she let 
them down by a cord through the window out of the town, for 
her house was upon the town wall. She advised them to flee to 
the mountains so as to avoid the pursuit from Jericho. 

In order to distinguish her house from that of any other she had 
been told by the spies to hang out a scarlet cord, our chronicle 
calls it a thread, which she bound to the window. Rahab's ex- 
pectations proved correct. The Lord protected Israel. He directed 
Joshua by what means to secure a victory. The priests were told to 
carry the ark, the symbol of Jehovah's presence, and to what place to 



go 'ALL HAIL' 

move it. The Lord ordered the children of Israel to follow it. The 
Israelites crossed the river Jordan as they had crossed the Red 
Sea. The waters divided before the ark and made a dry way for 
it. The feet of the priests who bore the ark stood firm on 
dry ground in the midst of Jordan. 

In remembrance of this and in gratitude for their protection and 
preservation on this memorable occasion, Joshua set up twelve 
stones in the m^idst of Jordan where the feet of the priests had 
stood, also twelve stones taken out of Jordan for the different 
tribes in a place called Gilgal ; and they kept the Passover on the 
fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of, Jericho. 
'And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after 
the Passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same 
day. And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten 
of the old corn of the land ; neither had the children of Israel 
manna any more ; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of 
Canaan that year' (Joshua v. verses ii, 12). 

And now Jericho was 'staitly' shut up. Israel encamped before 
the town. Joshua received orders from the Lord that they were 
to compass the city, and all the men of war and the priests bearing 
the ark, as we see them in one panel of the picture of the bronze 
do'or at page 18, were to walk in procession. Seven priests 
were to lead the way, going on before with seven trumpets of ram's 
horns, trumpets of jubilee. We see here that Canaanite strong- 
hold, the city of Jericho. The original of this picture is another 
panel of that famous bronze door. It is quite interesting to know 
that every little baby born in Florence at this present time is taken 
through this door into the church to be baptized, and the building 
is called the Baptistery. Looking at our picture again we see men 
blowing the long trumpets, and we remember that they were com- 
manded not to utter one single sound by voice until the signal was 
given. Joshua vi. verse 5 : 'Then shall all the people shout with 
a great shout, and the wall of the city shall fall down flat.' Every- 
body was put to the sword except Rahab and her family, who were 
spared. This was the reward of faith. Henceforth she remained 
with Israel, and we read of her marrying into one of their families. 
Some think that she married Salmon, and that their son was Boaz, 
that Boaz's son was Obed, and Obed's son was Jesse, and Jesse's 
son was David, from whom was descended Joseph, the husband 
of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

All the gold and silver of the town was put aside and conse- 
crated unto the Lord for use in the Tabernacle. Joshua's fame went 
through the country far and v/ide. With his fighting men trained 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 8i 

in desert warfare he defeated many kings, and took many cities, 
and his name spread terror through Canaan. Everybody dreaded 
the strength the Lord gave to the children of Israel. The Lord 
told Joshua he was to fear nothing. 

After Jericho had been taken the Canaanites were very much 
alarmed, and some of them desired to make peace. The people 
of a town called Gibeon succeeded by a stratagem in making a 
treaty with Israel. They sent an embassy to Joshua with worn- 
out and mended clothing, and mouldy bread and worn-out wine- 
skins, and they told him they came from a far country to make a 
treaty with Israel, because they had heard what God had done for 
them. The Israelites made the treaty, and on the second day after 
found themselves at Gibeon, which was a city of the Canaanites. 
They were very angry, but Joshua insisted on their keeping true to 
the treaty. Some Canaanite kings, too, were even more angry 
with Gibeon for making peace with Israel. The King of Jerusalem 
called in four other kings, and got together a great army and be- 
sieged Gibeon. The men of Gibeon sent to Jioshua for help. 
Joshua marched all night, and surprised the besieging Canaanites 
and routed them at the pass of Beth-horon. 

Joshua X. II : 'And it came to pass as they fled from' before 
Israel and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord 
cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah.' 
(That is, hailstones.) And now we have come to a famous and 
much-misunderstood passage, verse 12 : Then spake Joshua to the 
Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before 
the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand 
thou still upon Gibeon; and thou. Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. 
And the sun stood still and the moon staj^ed, until the people had 
avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the 
book of Jasher?' 

It has been supposed that this passage means that the sun actually 
stood still, which wduld mean that the earth ceased to move; 
but the truth is, such a literal interpretation of this highly poetic 
Eastern language is typical of the dullness of our Western minds, 
which makes us so often misunderstand the meaning of the hyper- 
bolic and figurative language of the Eastern poets, who wrote 
much of the Bible. 

The real meaning is perfectly plain. Joshua's army had chased 
the Amorites up the pass of Beth-horon, and were chasing them 
down the other side of the pass, discomfited by a terrible storm of 
hail; and Joshua prayed that the storm-clouds might not shut out 
the sun, but that the day might continue long enough to complete 



82 'ALL HAIL' 

the defeat of the Amorites. The poetic passage quoted from the 
book of Jasher merely asserts that the day continued long enough 
for the people to avenge themselves upon their enemies. If this 
passage be interpreted literally, it would be only fair to insist on 
the same interpretation of other poetic passages. For instance: 
The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord' (Psalm 
xcvii. 5) ; 'The stars in their courses fought against Sisera' (Judges 
V. 20). The passages quoted by the Bishop of London in his 
admirable book on the difficulties of the Old Testament plainly 
condemn the folly of taking literally Joshua's words as recorded 
in the Book of Jasher. 

The spoils of all the cities fell into the hands of the Israelites ; 
the vineyards and the cornjfields, and the fruit, and the store of all 
kinds, became an inheritance according to their tribes ; and thus at 
last the land rested from war. Joshua gathered all the people 
around him in Shechem, because he was getting old and because 
he wished to address them for the last time. He called for the 
elders of Israel, and for their heads and for their judges and for 
their officers ; and they presented themselves before God, and 
Joshua gave them' his first farewell address, probably at Shiloh, 
specially dwelling on the danger of any intercourse with the Cana- 
anites, and the destruction any backsliding of theirs would bring on 
them from the Lord. In his second and final farewell address 
at Shechem, Joshua said : 'Thus said the Lord God of Israel : 
your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even 
Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor : and they 
served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the 
other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of 
Canaan' (Joshua xxiv. verse 2). Joshua went on: See what 
the Lord has done : He has destroyed every nation, but you has 
He saved. It is your duty therefore to live up to your favoured 
position, and you must show gratitude for God's goodness to you. 
Joshua, in his first farewell address, had spoken of himself as 
going the way of all the earth, and that his hearers themselves 
knew how faithful God had been to them'. Everything had been 
fulfilled according to God's promise. They had been safe!, brought 
into the promised land, and they must never worship any other 
gods, but only their One True God. If they transgressed, he pre- 
dicted that punishment would most surely overtake them. He im- 
plored them to be mindful of all their manifold blessings. 

After the second and final address we read, Joshua xxiv. verse 
28 : 'So Joshua let the people depart, every man unto his own in- 
heritance. And it came to pass after these things that Joshua, the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 83 

son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and 
ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheri- 
tance in Timnath-serah, which is in mount Ephraim, on the north 
side of the hill of Gaash.' 

The character of Joshua is a very fine one. He is always the 
practical religious teacher as well as the great general. He reminds 
us of General Gordon. The tenderness with which he brings home 
his sin to Achan never interferes with the inexorable firmness with 
which he punishes him. His sense of supernatural guidance and 
protection, issuing in deep reverence and humility, is finely il- 
lustrated by the meeting in a vision of the great Israelite captain 
with the captain of the Lord's host outside Jericho, described in 
the Book of Joshua. The historic value of the Book of Joshua has 
been amply confirmed by some of the tablet letters found at a 
village called Amarna, between Memphis and Thebes in Egypt, 
where political letters which had passed between tributary Asiatic 
kings and the Pharaohs were found in 1888, showing the high civili- 
sation of Canaan in the days of Moses and Joshua. 

Of course we should not now describe events like the battle of 
Beth-horon, the crossing of Jordan, or the taking of Jericho with 
the passionate hyperbole which is the natural expression of these 
Eastern chroniclers. .We should record the bare facts, not the 
glorified vision of them given only to minds who saw God in 
everything and everything in God. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Judges — Ruth. 

We have now come to the Book of Judges. The Judges were 
the leaders or governors, whom God raised up from time to time to 
assist the cause of national unity against the dissensions of the 
tribes, and against the tyranny of the heathen kings of the Canaan- 
ites. After the death of Joshua the Israelites had no single leader 
obeyed by all the tribes. The Israelites without a head gradually 
lost their hard-won unity gained under Moses and Joshua, and 
were almost swallowed up in the heathen Canaanitish population. 
The children of Israel forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ash- 
toreth. During this period there was often complete anarchy, that 
is lack of any ordered government at all. As the Book of Judges 
xvii. 6 says: 'Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' 
Such was the result of worshipping idols, and intermarrying with 
the Canaanites, who, it may be observed, had not been exterminated 
as Moses had commanded. 

When Joshua was dead, Judah was chosen by the Lord to take 
the lead, and Judah took Simeon with him. The uncompleted 
conquest of Canaan was carried but little further, though wars 
continued, and the Israelites forgot all about God's requirements. 
They followed the evil example of the natives of Canaan ; they 
worshipped strange gods, such as groves (a grove — ashera— meant 
a sacred tree or pole representing a tree, probably a relic of the 
ancient tree- worship). The Lord saw the Israelites turning away 
from His Commandments, and at this He was deeply angered. As 
soon as they were left to shift for themselves misfortune overtook 
them. Their enemies defeated them; and we read of the Israelites 
falling into the hands of various heathen nations. Again the Lord 
in His mercy helped them'. He raised up daring fighting men as 
leaders. One of the Judges raised up by God was a woman named 
Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth. She spoke for God to the people. 
Judges iv. i: 'The children of Israel,' we read, 'again did evil in 
the sight of the Lord, and he sold them into the hand of Jabin, 
king of Hazor, the captain of whose hosts was Sisera .... 
who had nine hundred chariots of iron, and twenty years he 
mightily oppressed the children of Israel.' Deborah, the prophetess, 
who was judging Israel at that time, called upon Barak to raise an 

84 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 85 

army and overcome Sisera, and deliver Israel from Jabin. Barak 
required Deborah to go with him and she went. A great rising 
against Sisera took place, and the old idea of the unity of Israel 
came to the front, for six tribes took part in the war. 

There is a very ancient poem in the Book of judges v. 20 which 
tells about this war, and which says: The stars in their courses 
fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away; that 
ancient river, the river Kishon.' The poem goes on to praise Jael, 
the wife of H'eber the Kenite, for slaying Sisera. This poem cele- 
brates in verse what has already been recorded in the prose of the 
preceding chapter, namely, the complete defeat of Sisera by Barak, 
and the treacherous slaying of Sisera by Jael as he lay asleep secure 
in her hospitality in her tent. A great deal of allowance will be 
made for Jael's treacherous action if we understand that for twenty 
years the man she slew had been a cruel oppressor of the Israelites, 
and what was the fate of the w^omen and children in his hands may 
be guessed from some words near the close of the poem'. Of course 
Jael's treachery cannot be excused, but it can be better understood 
if we realise the sort of man Sisera was, and the burning indigna- 
tion which no doubt prompted this woman's action. 

Another celebrated man we read of in this book is Gideon, also 
called Jerubbaal. He was one of the greatest fighting judges of 
Israel. His father's name was Joash, and the two lived together 
in Manasseh. He lived at a very gloomy period of the national 
life of the Israelites ; all was dark. The Israelites were prone to 
idolatry at the time when Gideon took them in hand. We read of 
him in the Bible as threshing wheat by the winepress to hide it 
from' the Midianites, a fighting nomad race, who wandered about 
the country and the desert and attacked the Israelites. One of 
Gideon's achievements is well worth recording, if it were only for 
the practical lesson to be obtained from the measures he took to 
select his men. Gideon had collected thirty-two thousand men to 
meet the vast host of the Midianites. God put it into his mind to 
urge all, who were afraid, to return from the trysting-place at 
Mount Gilead. Twenty-two thousand returned to their homes. 
The Lord guided Gideon to feel that even the ten thousand left 
were too many. Then the Lord told Gideon to march his men 
down to the water, and the test he gave was this : Every man who 
threw himself down on his knees to drink, yielding to ' his thirst 
and forgetting his duty to be ready for a surprise attack, was to 
be rejected, and every one who lapped water from the hollow of 
his hand, standing erect and keeping hold of his weapons, was to 
be chosen. Out of the ten thousand only three hundred endured 



86 'ALL HAIL' 

the test and were chosen. Then Gideon planned a night attack on 
the Midianite camp with these three hundred men and was com- 
pletely successful. The lesson of this test is important. To serve 
the Lord acceptably we must have self-control. A few men with 
self-control are better than a host without it. You cannot give 
yourself to the service of the Lord till you have got possession of 
yourself to give, that is, self-mastery. 

The land of Israel after this rested in peace for forty years. An- 
other judge and mighty man of valour was Jephthah. He was a 
man of Gilead. Through no fault of his, he was out of favour, 
but the Israelites being once more engaged in war, remembered 
Jephthah's high qualities. They went to fetch him out of the 
land of Tob, and asked him to be their captain, to fight against 
the Ammonites. With the king of the children of Ammon he tried 
his best at first to reason ; to come to terms with them so as not 
to have to fight. He wished to prevent bloodshed, but the king of 
the Ammonites did not listen to this proposal. When Jephthah 
saw himself forced to go to war, he vowed a vow. It was this : 
If the Lord thought fit to deliver the children of Ammon into the 
hands of the children of Israel, Jephthah would show his gratitude 
thus : 'Whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet 
me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall 
surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering' 
(Judges xi. 31). 

He went forth. The Lord heard his vow. Jephthah overwhelmed 
the Ammonites. But now, in the hour of victory, the greatest 
possible misfortune befell him. His own beloved daughter was 
the first to greet her father on his safe return home from battle. 
She had come out to congratulate her father on his success. She 
had timbrels which she was playing joyfully, and in the lightness 
of her heart she was dancing. Little did she imagine what was 
in store for her and for her father. Jephthah, on setting eyes on 
her, could not contain himself for grief and anguish. He rent his 
clothes, and was in despair. He felt that there was no way out 
of this difficulty, for he feared to fail in keeping his word given 
to the Lord. He had now to tell his daughter what it was he had 
vowed. 'Alas, my daughter, thou hast brought me very low : 
. . . . for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I 
cannot go back' (Judges xi. 35). 

This dutiful and brave girl thought more of her father's not 
going back from his promise to God than she did of her own life. 
She consented to die willingly. As regards this vow of Jephthah's, 
several thoughts occur to us. Jephthah's knowledge of God was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 87 

small, and his views of God mistaken. There had been a great 
falling oflf of religion in Israel during the time of the Judges. 
Jephthah seems to have regarded God with dread, but without love. 
He had promised the Lord to offer up to Him a burnt offering, or 
thanksgiving for his victory over the children of Ammon, and 
dreaded the vengeance the Lord would take on his country^ if he 
failed to fulfil his vow. 

In those days Israel was, as we have seen, greatly demoralised 
by the example of heathen worship around them. To offer up a 
slave as a burnt offering, had the slave met him coming forth 
from the doors of his house, would probably have seemed quite 
natural and becoming to Jephthah. What he felt so sorely was 
that the victim claimed by his vow^ was his daughter, and his 
words to his daughter show how deeply he deplored the misfortune 
of her coming out to meet him. Again, it would have been far 
better if he had been able to trust God's goodness, confessed his 
error to God, and deliberately broken his vow. It never was the 
Lord's wish that any servant of His should commit such an heathen 
abomination as that of sacrificing his own child. Yet God might 
be pleased by the spirit of loyal devotion shown by Jephthah, and 
still more, surely, by that displayed by Jephthah's heroic daughter. 
It was Jephthah's misfortune that he lived in these days of anarchy, 
when the teaching of Moses was forgotten, when God's Su- 
premacy was seen, but His loving kindness and mercy little known. 
When Jephthah's days were done, he was followed by other judges. 
The Israelites still went on transgressing, and the Lord delivered 
them into the hands of the Philistines. The Philistines were the 
most powerful oppressors of Israel, and probably came from Crete, 
and were not of Semitic race at all. 

At this time there lived a man called Manoah and his wife. 
They were promiesd a son, and when he was born his parents 
called him Samson. The Lord's spirit came upon this child. 
When he grew up he became the strongest man in the land. His 
strength was supposed to be connected with the growth of his 
hair. As regards his character, he was a mixture; good and evil 
were ever fighting in him to gain the upper hand. He was dedi- 
cated to God from his birth, but, alas ! he disappointed God. Called 
to deliver Israel from the Philistines, he thought nothing of his 
high calling in comparison with the gratification of his own inclina- 
tions, and married a Philistine woman. 

Whenever a man swerves from God's commandments, he has to 
suffer the natural consequence of wrong-doing. 'What man soweth 
that shall he also reap.' Samson proved no exception to the rule. 



88 ' ALL HAIL ' 

We are told that one day Samson met a young lion, which he 
succeeded in killing as easily as if this animal had been, not the 
king of beasts, but a weak little goat. Some time afterwards, com- 
ing back the same way, he saw that bees had been storing honey 
in the carcass of the lion. Samson, being hungry, ate of the 
honey. Joining his friends, he gave them a riddle to guess in con- 
nection with what had occurred. 'Out of the eater came forth 
meat; out of the strong came forth sweetness' (Judges xiv. 14). 

Samson offered a challenge to his friends, that if they expounded 
the meaning of this riddle he would give them thirty sheets and 
thirty changes of garments, but if not they should give the same 
to him. His Philistine wife was a very inquisitive woman, and she 
left him no peace until he had made known to her the answer. 
This deceitful woman disclosed the answer to her countrymen, and 
Samson was furiously angry with her. He left her, and when he 
returned she had been given to his companion. Then he acted 
thoughtlessly and cruelly. He caught a number of foxes (jackals, 
R.V.) and tied their tails together; he then attached burning 
torches to their tails, and loosed these wretched animals into the 
fields of the Philistines, with the object of setting fire to the stand- 
ing com, to the vineyards, and to the olives, so as to destroy every- 
thing. 

Presently it was his enemies' turn to take revenge on Samson; 
they got hold of him and tied him down. The Bible says: 'They 
bound him with two new cords' (Judges xv. 13). In this pitiable 
condition, the spirit of the Lord came mightily down upon him. 
Samson was given power to tear asunder his cords, as though they 
were but flax. With the jawbone of an ass he slew a thousand 
men. He then threw it away. He became very thirsty, and called 
on the Lord, and said that He had given him deliverance out of 
the hands of his enemies, but that he would die of thirst unless 
the Lord gave him drink. Verse 19 : 'Then God clave an hollow 
place that was in the jaw and there came water thereout; and when 
he had drunk, his spirit came again and he revived.' In our picture 
we see Samson looking a splendid figure, full of strength and 
vigorous manhood. 

Samson judged Israel for twenty years. Another stirring event 
in his life occurred when he arrived at a place called Gaza. Here 
the Philistines lay in wait for him to do him harm ; but he was 
too strong for them. 'He arose at midnight and took the doors 
of the gate of the city, .... and went away with them, bar 
and all, and put them upon his shoulders and carried them up to 
the top of the hill which is before Hebron' (Judges xvi. 3). 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 89 

Samson loved a woman called Delilah, who lived in the valley 
of Sorek. The Philistines took advantage of this love affair of 
Samson's, and asked her to entice him and discover to them wherein 
his great strength lay, and by what means they might prevail 
against him and make him prisoner. The Philistines offered 
Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver if she succeeded. After 
Delilah had made three unsuccessful attempts, Samson each time 
mocking her, she at last succeeded in making him open his heart 
to her. The answer was, verse 17: 'There hath not come a razor 
upon my head.' Judges xvi. verse 17 : '. . . . if I be shaven, 
then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be 

like any other man And she made him sleep upon her 

knees ; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off 
the seven locks of his head ; and she began to afflict him, and his 
strength went from' him. And she said, The Philistines be upon 
thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will 
go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not 
not that the Lord was departed from him. But the Philistines 
took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, 
and bound him with fetters of brass ; and he did grind in the 
prison house. Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again 
after he was shaven. Then the lords of the Philistines gathered 
them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, 
and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our 

enemy into our hand And it came to pass when their 

hearts were merry, that they said. Call for Samson, that he may 
make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house ; 
and he made them sport : and they set him between the pillars. 
And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand. Suffer 
me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that 
I may lean upon them. Now the house was full of men and 
wom.en ; and all the lords of the Philistines were there ; and there 

were upon the roof about three thousand men and women 

And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remem- 
ber me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, 
O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my 
two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon 
which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one 
with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson 
said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with 
all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the 
people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death 
were more than they which he slew in his life. Then his brethren 



90 ' ALL HAIL ' 

and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and 
brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the 
buryingplace of Manoah his father.' 

Thus died the strongest in body, but the weakest in character, 
of all the Judges. We read of others who followed, but we have 
given enough time to this book of the Bible, and must pass on to 
one of the sweetest stories the Bible has to tell us. It is all about 
an attractive and amiable young widow called Ruth. The book we 
have arrived at, a beautiful idyll, goes by her name. Ruth, who 
was a woman of the Moabites, had a loving heart. She did not 
wish to leave her mother-in-law alone while she was in great 
trouble, the latter having lost her husband as well as her two sons, 
one of whom had been Ruth's husband. 

Naomi, the mother-in-law, thought that it was best for her to 
return into her own country, which she had left with her husband 
Elimelech, on account of famine there. Naomi arose with her 
two daughters-in-law, intending to go back home, because she had 
heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had supplied His 
people with bread. They went on their way to Judah. Naomi was 
old and unhappy, and did not wish to become a burden to others; 
Ruth had sympathy for her and comforted her, just because of 
all the trouble that the old woman was experiencing. 

Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law (Ruth i. verse 8) : 'Go, 
return each to her mother's house : the Lord deal kindly with you as 
ye have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant you that 
ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. Then 
she kissed them ; and they lifted up their voice, and wept. And 
they said unto her. Surely we will return with thee unto thy 

people Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave 

unto her. And she said, Behold thy sister-in-law is gone back 
unto her people, and unto her gods : return thou after thy sister-in- 
law. And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return 
from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I will go : and 
where thou lodgest I will lodge : thy people shall be my people, and 
thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I 
be buried: the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death 
part thee and me. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded 
to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.' 

All we have been reading about gives us something to think of. 
Wihen people are poor and in distress, it does not by any means 
follow that they always remain unhapp}-. God loves and helps 
all people in distress if they put their trust in Him, be they rich 
or be they poor. Good people, such as were Naomi and Ruth, hold 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 91 

communion with God. On this account such people are better 
able than thoughtless ones to hear God's Voice. These two women 
remained in the Lord's keeping: Naomi never forgot either to 
praise or to thank Him. They had left the country of Moab and 
had now arrived in Bethlehem', just at the beginning of the barley 
harvest, that is, the month of April. 

*'And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of 
wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz. And 
Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me go now to the field, 
and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. 
And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. And she went and 
came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers ; and her hap was 

to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz And 

behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers. The 
Lord be with you. And they answered him, the Lord bless thee. 
Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set over the reapers. 
Whose damsel is this?' (Ruth ii. verses 1-5). 

And the servant answered and said that Naomi had come from 
the country of Moab, and that Ruth had asked to be allowed to 
gather after the reapers, that she had continued from morning till 
even, and that she had tarried a little while in the house, Boaz told 
Ruth to be sure to glean in no other field, she was not to go away, 
but was to hold fast by the maidens of Boaz. 

Verse 9: 'Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and 
go thou after them : have I not charged the young men that they 
shall not touch thee? And when thou art athirst, go unto the 
vessels, and drink of that which the young men have drawn. Then 
she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said 
unto him. Why have I found grace in thine eyes that thou shouldest 
take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? And Boaz an- 
swered and said unto her. It hath fully been shewed me all that 
thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine 
husband : and how thou hast left thy father and mother, and art 
come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord 
recompense thy work, and the full reward be given thee of the 
Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. 
Then she said. Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord ; for that 
thou hast comforted me; and for that thou hast spoken friendly 
unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine hand- 
maidens. And Boaz said unto her. At meal time come down hither, 
and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she 
sat beside the reapers, and he reached her parched corn, and she 
did eat, and was sufficed, and left' 



92 'ALL HAIL' 

Boaz commanded his young men to allow Ruth to glean wherever 
she liked, and not to reproach her. Handfuls were purposely put 
in her way. She was able to take up a great deal, and at even she 
went back into the city, and her mother-in-law was delighted with 
the amount she had gleaned. Upon asking in whose field it was, 
and being told the owner was Boaz, Naomi exclaimed (verse 20) : 
'Blessed be he of the Lord, who hath not left off his kindness to the 
living and to the dead.' Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was their 
next of kin. 

Now, by all this we learn how well it is for us not to despair when 
trouble is upon us. How much better it is for us to be up and 
doing. Under no circumstances is there any excuse for us for 
idly wasting our precious time. This we are well taught by the 
beautiful story of Ruth. We are born into this world to make 
ourselves useful ; some of us are in one condition, some of us are 
in another. We are not meant all to be alike. One person has 
more, another has less, at his or her command. These sort of 
differences are of no importance whatever; but, what does matter, 
and the thing which is required of us, is that each one of us do our 
duty, no matter whether it be in a high place or in a humble one, 
be we rich or be we poor, for outward conditions do not count in 
God's eyes, but God looks at the heart. 

This is where many people make such big mistakes, and find 
life's lesson a hard one to learn. The Bible tells us God is no 
respecter of persons. He looks at our heart. Let us hold fast to 
this fact, and take comfort. Everybody is given his or her chance, 
and our Heavenly Father metes out to each one his allotted due. 
God is Justice. The Peer of the Realm has one day to give ac- 
count in what way he has made use of his talents, which were 
lent to him' by His Creator. The servant who cleans his silver 
and makes it shine does his duty to the Lord, if he puts his heart 
and soul into the work he has undertaken to perform. 

From some of us it is expected that we should use our brains ; 
others have to work with their hands. Where would be the sense 
of our being given a good memory, for instance, if we turn it to no 
good account? Or, when we are given ten useful fingers, what is 
the good of them unless we give them plenty to do? Idleness is 
against nature, and the destruction of the purpose as well as the 
joy of life. The Lord blesses all honest work, so long as that 
which we do is done in the right spirit and to the best of our power. 

A humble position may be made admirable by the way the duties 
of it are discharged. The King on his throne has to set a good 
example. He and his ministers have a duty to perform to govern 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 93 

wisely. A teacher of the young has to exercise patience with 
pupils. A farmer has to plough and to sow and to reap in order 
that in due season, and with God's blessing, we may have bread to 
eat. A little girl has to be taken down to the schoolroom to the 
minute, so as to start lessons punctually. A little boy at school has 
to learn to be truthful and honest, dutiful to his masters, and 
fair to his companions. He has to be taught to acquire true prin- 
ciples, so that all his life's journey he may have high and noble 
aims, and show sound judgment when he comes to act. He has to 
learn to be useful, kind, unselfish, and to exert himself persever- 
ingly. Only in this way can he obtain real satisfaction out of life, 
and be a light to others. It is a busy world we live in; we have 
no time to lose. 

We have spoken about the benefits of working in connection with 
Ruth, and now we must get back to her. Naomi had been de- 
lighted with Ruth's success. Her first idea, on seeing Ruth come 
back laden with good things, was to thank and praise God for all 
His mercies. Well she knew that it was the Lord who was bring- 
ing all this to pass. Ruth and Boaz met at the threshing-floor; 
there, by Naomi's advice, when Boaz lay down by the heap of corn 
she went and laid herself at his feet. 

When Boaz noticed her, she introduced herself to him as to her 
near kinsman and claimed his protection, that is, that he should take 
her to be his wife. Boaz was very willing to give this position to 
so virtuous a woman, but he had to reckon first with a nearer kins- 
man. A very interesting transaction followed. Boaz summoned 
the nearer kinsman to the gate of Bethlehem to exercise his right 
or to refuse it, and ten men of the elders of the city as witnesses. 
The nearer kinsman refused to redeem it because it involved taking 
Ruth as his wife. 

The remainder of the account of the performance of this very 
interesting Eastern custom may be given in the words of our 
book (Ruth iv. 7-12) : 'Now this was the manner in former time 
in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to 
confirm' all things ; a m.an plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his 
neighbour : and this was a testimony in Israel. Therefore the kins- 
man said unto Boaz, Buy. it for thee. So he drew off his shoe. 
And Boaz said unto the elders and unto all the people, Ye are 
witnesses this day that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and 
all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi. More- 
over Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to 
be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, 
that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, 



94 'ALL HAIL' 

and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day. And all 
the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are wit- 
nesses. The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house 
like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel : 
and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Beth-lehem.' 

And so they were married, and Ruth's firstborn son was called 
Obed, and Obed was the grandfather of David. And thus through 
David Ruth was an ancestress of Joseph, the reputed father of 
Christ. Naomi, to whom Ruth had been such a faithful daughter- 
in-law, took charge of the child and nursed him, and so her old 
age ended happily. 



CHAPTER VIL 

I Samuel (Saul — David). 

The book we have now to consider is called the First Book of 
Samuel; in the Hebrew canon the two books of Samuel are one, 
because the chief figure in the history recorded is one who bore 
that name. Shiloh was the principal sanctuary of Israel, where 
the Ark and the Tent of Meeting were stationed throughout the 
time of the Judges. Eli and his two sons were priests at Shiloh. 
The history set forth in the first and second books of Samuel ex- 
tends over about a hundred years. In that time Israel rose out of 
the state of disorder and decay described in the Book of Judges, 
and reached the unity and strength of a true national life. The 
monarchy was the symbol of the nation, and had a principal part in 
making the nation, and so the interest centres here round the 
makers of the kingdom — Samuel, Saul, and David. The interest 
centres first round Samuel, with whom the early part of the first 
Book of Samuel is occupied. Samuel was the son of parents whose 
names were Elkanah and Hannah. They were God-fearing people. 
The man went up from his home every year to worship and sacrifice 
anto the Lord at Shiloh, the chief centre for worship. For a long 
while Elkanah and Hannah had wished for a son. The woman had 
prayed earnestly to the Lord to fulfil her wish. When the child 
was born, his parents made a vow that, as a token of thanksgiving, 
Samuel should be brought up to serve the Lord. 

Hannah's song, which inspired parts of the Magnificat, is very 
beautiful, i Samuel ii. verse i : 'My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, 
mine horn is exalted in the Lord : my mouth is enlarged over mine 
enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation. There is none holy 
as the Lord : for there is none beside thee : neither is there any rock 
like our God. Talk no more so exceeding proudly : let not arro- 
gancy come out of your mouth : for the Lord is a God of knowledge, 
and by Him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men 
are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength. They 
that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that 
were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she 
that hath many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth, and 
maketh alive : he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The 

95 



96 'ALL HAIL' 

Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth 
up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the 
beggar from the dunghill, to set them' among princes, and to make 
them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are 
the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them. He will keep 
the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; 
for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord 
shall be broken to pieces ; out of heaven shall he thunder upon 
them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth: and he shall 
give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.' 

Samuel means 'name of God.' His mother said she called him 
Samuel, because I have asked him of the Lord' (i Samuel i. 20). 
'Name of God' is surely a very beautiful name. He was one of 
the fortunate bo5'S who have good parents. There is no blessing 
that children can have greater than the blessing of good parents. 
It makes all the difference whether or not we are cared for ten- 
derly, and taught to know God, our Heavenly Father, and Jesus, 
who died for us, and told all about them while one is still quite 
young. Thus we are given the opportunity of hearing about God's 
mercy and goodness to all men. Have y^{t not reason to be 
grieved for those children who do not enjoy a similar blessing, 
whose parents possibly do not lead good lives, and are therefore 
not able to teach their children how to turn their own lives to good 
account? Often it is not chiefly the fault of the wrong-doers 
when they sin in later life. There are many who have not been 
cared for at the proper time, and who have been brought up in 
evil surroundings with a bad example, and so know no better. 
What chance, we ask ourselves, can such poor little neglected 
children have? Our duty is to help all unfortunate people: first 
by our prayers, and then by our endeavours and work amongst 
them. Let us ask our Heavenly Father to bring about a change in 
their sad state. 

Samuel's parents brought him up well. When he was still a 
small boy, they gave him to God. He ministered in the sanctuary 
at Shiloh before the Lord, where he had been placed in the care of 
the old chief priest Eli. 

I Samuel ii. verse 19: 'Moreover his mother made him a little 
coat, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up 
with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. And Eli blessed 

Elkanah and his wife And they went unto their own 

hom.e,' 

The child Samuel grew up in favour with the Lord, and also 
with men. We must remember for a moment that in the olden 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 97 

times the Lord conversed with people on earth in the same way 
as now. For instance, the Lord spoke to Abraham and to Moses 
when they opened their hearts to the Voice of God's Holy Spirit. 
But for some time before the days of Samuel there had been *no 
open vision,' no speech on earth of God to man, because men were 
deaf to H'is Voice. But to Samuel, because his heart was open 
to God, the Lord spoke and revealed Himself anew. 

I Samuel iii. verse 2: 'And it came to pass at that time, when 
Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes began to wax dim, that 
he could not see; and ere the lamp of God went out in the temple 
of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down 
to sleep ; that the Lord called Samuel : and he answered. Here 
am I. And he ran unto Eli, and said. Here am I ; for thou calledst 
me. And he said, I called not ; lie down again. And he went and 
lay down.' 

This happened three times. The old priest Eli knew now that it 
was God speaking to Samuel, and he instructed the boy to be at- 
tentive and to listen to what the Lord had to say to him. The 
Lord came and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel; and the 
boy answered, 'Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth' (i Samuel 
iii. 10). 

Then the Lord told Samuel that He would punish the wicked- 
ness of Eli's sons, and the weakness of Eli their father in not 
restraining them. Samuel told Eli, and Eli accepted humbly the 
decision of the Lord thus revealed. 

We alwaj^s picture Samuel as we see him in our own National 
Gallery, as a child praying and listening to the Lord's voice. 
'And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none 
of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan even 
to Beer-sheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of 
the Lord' (verses 19, 20). 

In the next war we read that Israel went out against the Phil- 
istines to battle. The Israelites were smitten before the Philistines. 
A great misfortune befell them. The precious Ark, which rep- 
resented the presence of the Unseen Heavenly King, Jehovah, had 
been brought out from Shiloh to aid the Israelites, and fell into 
the hands of their enemies, and with them it remained for seven 
months. Eli, the old chief priest, heard of his calamity. His two 
sons, the wicked priests H'ophni and Phinehas, had been slain in the 
battle, and only too well did he realise that the glory of the Lord 
had departed from Israel. The sudden shock of the news of so 
great a disaster proved too much for the old man, for he was 
ninety-eight years of age. When the messenger 'made mention 



98 'ALL HAIL' 

of the ark of God, he fell from off the seat backward by the side 
of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died' (i Samuel iv. i8). 

We learn from this sacred things do not protect wicked men 
like Eli's sons, who brought out the Ark to battle, depending on its 
sacredness to keep them safe. The Philistines, too, gained no 
advantage by their capture of the Ark. The possession of that 
sacred treasure brought them neither success nor satisfaction. 

In course of time the wickedness of Samuel's sons, whom; when 
he was too old to judge Israel himself, he had appointed in his 
place, caused general discontent among the people, who resented 
being under such unjust rulers, for Samuel's sons took bribes, 
and gave bought judgments. At last the people assembled at 
Ramah and expressed a wish to have a king over them, just as all 
the other nations around them. 'But the thing displeased Samuel 
. . . . and he prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto 
Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say 
unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected 
me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the 
works which they have done since the day that I brought them up 
out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me 
and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore 
hearken unto their voice : howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, 
and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them' 
(i Samuel viii. 6-9). 

If the iniquity of Samuel's sons was the immediate cause of 
the demand for a monarch, yet it is evident that the example of 
other nations made the Israelites discontented with a purely re- 
ligious ruler, and desirous of an earthly king. There was also the 
presssure of the Philistines, who at this period, and for some 
time after, were the most dangerous opponents of the Israelites, and 
made a king desirable from a military point of view. An earthly 
king amounted to a rejection of Jehovah, the Unseen King, who 
had brought them out of Egypt, and who had given them that great 
deliverance at the passage of the Red Sea. 

Samuel gave the people full warning of the exactions they would 
have to endure at the hands of an earthly king, but they persisted, 
saying: 'Nay, but we will have a king over us; that we also may 
be like all the nations ; and that our king may judge us, and go out 
before us, and fight our battles.' I Samuel viii. verses 19,-20. Thus 
they forgot the Lord of Hosts who had so often helped them to 
victory. 

Now let us ask ourselves the reason why an all-powerful God 
should think fit to give way to the wish of the wrong-headed 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 99 

Israelites. On the face of it, this appears most strange; but with 
a little trouble we shall learn our lesson from this fact. God has 
given us free will which we can submit to His, or set up against 
His. We are naturally ignorant and self-willed. We must en- 
deavour to cure ourselves of these faults. We must learn to pray 
not for what we think is required, but for what the Lord thinks 
best to send: to pray that the Lord will incline our hearts to do 
His Will. Not my will, but Thine, O Lord, be done. Otherwise 
we take too much upon ourselves, and we fall under the load. Let 
us pray (Psalm cxix. verse 34) : 'O Lord, give me an understand- 
ing heart. Incline my heart to be obedient unto Thee. Give me 
faith and trust in Thee.' We cannot foretell the future, nor foresee 
what is best for us: God can. Therefore let us commit our ways 
into His Hands. The Lord promises us His help. Yet few of 
us accept His gracious invitation of going straight to Him and 
casting our burden on Him. 

Continuing our Bible reading, we are told in connection with 
the request of the Israelites for a king, that at this time there lived 
a man called Kish, who was of the tribe of Benjamin. He was 
a mighty man of valour. He had a son whose name was Saul : 
'A choice young man and a goodly' (i Samuel ix. verse 2). In all 
Israel there was nobody statelier to look upon than he; and in 
stature he was quite the tallest. Verse 2: 'From his shoulders 
and upwards he was higher than any of the people.' 

While reading our Bible we must give close attention, not 
letting our thoughts wander. It is not enough merely to read : we 
must try to understand the Bible. The Israelites wished for a 
king. The Lord directed their choice to fall upon Saul. He was 
chosen because he was the right man at that moment, and the best 
for the immediate needs of the Israelites, He was a true warrior, 
though a weak character, and his victories over the Ammonites 
soon confirmed the wisdom of God's choice. 

And now we must occupy ourselves with the choosing of Saul. 
Kish had lost some of his asses, and he sent out his son Saul in 
search of them. We read of Saul passing through mount Ephraim, 
and other places, but nowhere did he find the lost animals. When 
he and his servant came to Zuph, Saul proposed they should re- 
turn. They had come to an end of their provisions, but the servant 
advised going to the city to consult an honourable man, a man 
of God he had heard about. The servant said, Peradventure we 
can get advice and set out to find the lost animals. Saul was 
concerned about having no present to bring to this man. He said 
(verse 7) : The bread is spent in our vessels.' The servant had 



100 ' ALL HAIL ' 

a small piece of silver on him, a quarter of a shekel, i.e., about 
seven pence ; of course this was more valuable in those days, and 
this they proposed to present to the man of God. Having agreed, 
the two sallied forth in quest of the seer, or prophet. 

On their way they asked some young maidens, who were drawing 
water, if the prophet were at hand. They answered, Yes: but they 
advised Saul to make haste as the prophet was just on the point of 
proceeding to a high place to bless the sacrifice. Samuel (for the 
man of God was that good old prophet) and Saul met each other. 
Now the Lord had informed Samuel a day before Saul came that he 
would find there a man out of the land of Benjamin. This man, 
Samuel was to anoint captain and king over Israel, so that he 
might be the means of saving them from the Philistines. The Lord 
said that their cry of distress had reached Him. Saul drew near 
to Samuel, and the Lord whispered in Samuel's heart : 'Behold the 
man I spake to thee of: this same shall reign over my people' 
(i Samuel ix. verse 17) : And he gave Saul the joyful news not 
to occupy his mind about the lost asses, because they had been 
found. Samuel greeted Saul saying (verse 20) : 'And on whom is 
all the desire of Israel? Is it not on thee and on all thy father's 
house?' Saul answered, how could that possibly be, seeing that he 
was a Benjamite of the smallest of the tribes. And now we have 
come to the sacrificial feast which was followed by the anointing of 
Saul. 

I Samuel ix. verse 22 : 'And Samuel took Saul and his servant, 
and brought them into the parlour, and made them sit in the 
chiefest place among them that were bidden, which were about 
thirty persons. And Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion 
which I gave thee, of which I said unto thee, Set it by thee. And 
the cook took up the shoulder, and that which was upon it, and 
set it before Saul. And Samuel said. Behold that Avhich is left! 
set it before thee, and eat: for unto this time has it been kept 
for thee since I said, I have invited the people. So Saul did eat with 
Samuel that day. And when they were come down from the high 
place into the city, Samuel communed with Saul upon the top 
of the house. And they rose early : and it came to pass about 
the spring of the day that Samuel called Saul to the top of the 
house, saying. Up, that I may send thee away. And Saul arose, 
and they went out both of them, he and Samuel abroad. And 
as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said to 
Saul, Bid the servant pass on before us (and he passed on), but 
stand thou still awhile, that I may shew thee the word of God. 
Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE loi 

kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed 
thee to be captain over his inheritance?' 

Samuel called the people together unto the Lord near Mizpeh. 
Here he addressed them, and put the fact nakedly before them 
that they had rejected the Lord from being their King. They 
were called upon to present themselves before the Lord, by their 
tribes and by their thousands. Saul could nowhere be found. He 
had hidden himself 'among the stuff' {i.e., the baggage). They 
ran and fetched him, and when he stood among the people he was 
higher than any of them, from his shoulders and upwards. Sam- 
uel said unto the children of Israel, See ye him whom the Lord 
hath chosen, and ever3'body shouted, and said. God save the king 
(i Samuel x. 24), words now familiar to us in our National An- 
them, which were evidently derived from this passage. 

I Samuel x. verse 25 : 'Then Samuel told the people the man- 
ner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before 
the Lord. And Samuel sent all the people away, every man to 
his house. And Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went 
with him a band of men whose hearts God had touched, (xi. 15). 
'And all the people went to Gilgal ; and there they made Saul king 
before the Lord ; and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace of- 
ferings before the Lord ; and there Saul and all the men of Israel 
rejoiced greatly.' 

Saul, very early in his reign, became extremely popular, because 
he was successful in battle against Nahash and the army of the 
Ammonites at the siege of Jabesh-gilead, besides leading the Is- 
raelites to victory on other occasions. By divine authority he was 
commissioned to go against the Amalekites. These people had 
transgressed in their conduct towards the Israelites. Vengeance 
was to be taken upon them for this. Saul disobeyed God's com- 
m^ands. He twice failed in this way. By disobedience he brought 
upon himself God's displeasure. He forgot that he was reigning 
as King of Israel by the Will of God. 

Samuel twice reproved him; but it was in vain. The sentence 
of rejection was passed upon him. Samuel's significant saying 
(i Samuel xv. 22) : 'To obey is better than sacrifice, and to 
hearken than the fat of rams,' expresses the lesson of this par- 
ticular occurrence, the sparing of the king of the Amalekites and 
the best of the spoil. 

The Lord commanded Samuel to stop mourning over Saul. He 
had been rejected, and God Himself had provided another king 
for the Israelites. He ordered Samuel to go to Jesse, the Bethle- 
hemite, and the prophet came to Jesse to Bethlehem. One after 



102 'ALL HAIL ^ 

another of Jesse's sons were brought in for Samuel, the man of 
God, by God's direction, to select from. Here we read that state- 
ment illustrative of what we have been talking about. The Lord 
guided Samuel's judgment thus : 'Look not on his countenance, 
nor on the height of his stature; .... for the Lord seeth not 
as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, 
but the Lord looketh on the heart' (i Samuel xvi. 7). 

God values the inner man. Oftentimes the Lord thinks fit to 
choose the weak, the young, the plain, the insignificant, to be in- 
struments in His Hands for bringing wonderful things to pass. 
Both men and animals are used by Him to carry out His wise 
purposes. The Bible distinctly tells us that 'the first shall be last, 
and the last shall be first' (Matthew xx. 16). We are also told 
that 'Many are called, but few are chosen,' 

For the new king God chose the very youngest and least ex- 
perienced of all Jesse's sons. The youth was absent, feeding his 
father's flocks; they sent for him and brought him, 'He was 
ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look 
to. And the Lord said. Arise, and anoint him ; for this is he. 
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst 
of his brethren : and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from 
that day forward' (i Samuel xvi. 12, 13), Here was a plain 
shepherd-boy called to the highest place in the land. 

We read in another passage of the First Book of Samuel xvi, 
21 : 'And David came to Saul, and stood before him : and he loved 
him greatly; and he became his armourbearer. And Saul sent to 
Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me ; for he 
hath found favour in my sight. And it came to pass, when the 
evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and 
played with his hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and 
the evil spirit departed from him.' 

Now we have once more to give our attention to the Philistines. 
They were determined to conquer the Israelites, They gathered 
together their armies to battle near a place called Shochoh, which 
belonged to Judah, Saul and the men of Israel were gathered to- 
gether and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in ar- 
ray against the Philistines, These stood on a mountain on the 
one side, and the Israelites stood on a mountain on the other side, 
and there was a valley between them. We read that there went 
a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, whose name was 
Goliath, of Gath. He was a giant, g]^ feet high. On his head he 
had a helmet of brass. He was armed with a coat of mail, which 
was very heavy. On his legs he had greaves of brass (brass means 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 103 

copper), and between his shoulders was a target of brass (R.V. 
javelin). The staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam. Thus 
equipped, he came out and shouted his challenge to the army of 
Israel. 

Goliath stands before us in our picture. This is the kind of 
man an Italian artist believed Goliath had been. Poor Goliath ! 
Perhaps it would please him little to know that thus he is shaped 
in marble, and handed down to us on the pavement of a glorious 
cathedral; but that is where we find him in a town called Siena, 
and very beautiful it all is there. 

The Philistines put all their trust in their giant and his great 
strength ; they imagined that all would be well with them'. We 
shall see how utterly mistaken they were. They were heathens, 
and in consequence did not take the Lord into consideration. Their 
trust was not in the true God. God is stronger than any man. 
This fact the Philistines did not remember. It is the Lord who 
can turn the weakest into the strongest, if it be H'is Will. The 
children of Israel were terrified at the giant, and nobody had any 
heart to go against him. The giant stood forth and renewed his 
challenge to the army of Israel. They were asked to choose a 
man and send him down to meet Goliath, who was boastful and 
perfectly self-confident. The Israelites were dismayed and greatly 
afraid. The three elder sons of Jesse had followed Saul to bat- 
tle. David, being the youngest, was feeding his father's flocks at 
Bethlehem. Jesse bade David take parched corn to the camp for 
his brethren ; he was also to carry cheeses to the captain of their 
thousand. 

David rose up early in the morning and left the sheep with a 
keeper, and he took the provisions and arrived at the trench (bar- 
ricade of waggons) just as the people were going forth to fight, 
and were shouting for the battle. David left his baggage in the 
hand of ' the keeper of the baggage, and ran into the army and 
saluted his brethren; and as he was talking to them, up came the 
giant Goliath. David made inquiries as to the state of the war: 
he weighed all, he made up his mind; he presented himself to 
Saul and said (i Samuel xvii. 32) : 'Let no man's heart fail be- 
cause of him (i.e., Goliath) ; thy servant will go and fight with this 
Philistine.' 

God's call had come to David. All were amazed; he/ to offer 
to fight against such odds. He, a mere boy, with no experience 
in warfare! He seemed unlikely to be of the slightest use. He 
was judged to be too daring; he was rebuked, and his offer was 
refused. Undaunted, he persisted. He urged that his past life 



104 ' ALL HAIL ' 

had qualified him for this task. Living out, as he had done, in 
God's beautiful open fresh air, he had become strong and health}^ 
in body and in mind. Wiiile tending his sheep he had practised 
slinging till he had reached great perfection as a slinger; his eye 
had become so true, his hand so sure, that there was nothing 
within the range of a sling that could escape his aim. He told 
Saul that one day a lion and a bear had taken a lamb out of his 
father's flocks ; and he had slain both the wild beasts, and he was 
sure this Philistine also would fall before him. David stood up 
erect, and calm, and determined. He declared that he had no 
fear whatsoever, for he felt the Lord's protection. Saul was thus 
persuaded to agree, and to say that David was to be allowed to go 
forward. Verse 37 : 'Go, and the Lord be with thee,' were King 
Saul's parting words. 

Here he is in our book as an early Italian painter has pictured 
him for us. The immortal Gaddi has painted him on a pillar, which 
supports, along with many others, the roof of the finest church in 
Florence, called St. Croce. We often used to go and see David 
there, and gaze long and lovingly on this boy as we wandered round 
and round this hallowed place, feasting our eyes on so much beauty. 

David's first idea was to arm himself as a warrior ready for 
battle. H'e allowed Saul to put on him his armour, and a helmet 
of brass upon his head, and also a coat of mail. David then 
girded his sword upon his armour, and thus he assayed to go forth. 
But he felt out of his element in such equipment ; he felt he had 
no experience of the arms and the armour. David said to Saul 
(verse 39), 'I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them;' 
i,c., he had never used such weapons. So he put them all away. 
He took instead his staff in his hand, and he chose five smooth 
stones out of the brook, which he put into a shepherd's bag. In his 
hand was a sling, and he felt at ease and master of his weapon. 
Above all, his faith in the Lord was firm. 

When he thus appeared on the scene, naturally not only the 
Israelites but also the Philistines were astonished, and Goliath 
utterly disdained David, who pointed out to him that, whereas 
Goliath came armed, relying on sword and spear and shield, he 
(David) cam.e relying upon the God of Israel, and the Lord's help 
had been promised to him and to the children of Israel. Verse 45 : 
T come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of 
the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the 
Lord deliver thee into mine hand ; and I will smite thee, and take 

thine head from thee that all the earth may know that 

there is a God in Israel.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 105 

The single combat began. The giant bore down upon David. 
The latter took a stone, slung it, and smote the Philistine in his 
forehead, so that he fell to the earth upon his face. All this had 
been done with a stone. David had no sword in his hand. He ran 
and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword and drew it out 
of its sheath, and slew him and cut off his head with it. As soon 
as the Philistines saw that their champion was dead they fled. The 
men of Israel and Judah shouted and pursued the Philistines into 
the valley and up to the gates of Ekron. The wounded Philis- 
tines lay all over the country. The children of Israel spoiled their 
tents, and David took the head of the giant and brought it to Saul, 
and afterwards to Jerusalem. His armour he put into his tent. 
Women came out of all cities of Israel to accompany David, sing- 
ing and dancing with joy, to meet King Saul, with tabrets and with 
instruments of music. And as they went along they sang to one 
another, 'Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands' 
(i Samuel xviii. 7). Saul was very angry at this. He said. What 
more can he have but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from 
that day and forward. 

As we look at our picture we are struck with the pensive face 
of David. He does not exult in his success, nor allow himself to 
be flushed or excited by victory: he has complete control over 
himself even at this youthful period of his life, and serious thoughts 
are occupying his mind concerning the future of his countrymen. 
Jonathan, the king's son, watched David speaking to his father, and 
at first sight the souls of these two young men embraced and 
were knit in an eternal friendship. They became friends for the 
rest of their lives. David and Jonathan were as one soul, and the 
latter stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it 
to David, and of his garment and even of his sword, and his bow 
and his girdle, and gave them all to David as tokens of friendship. 
David behaved himself wisely in every way. Saul set him over 
the men of war, and everybody accepted his leadership : he was 
made much of on account of his success. 

Soon we read that Saul became very jealous of him on this ac- 
count. Verse 10: 'And it came to pass on the morrow that the 
evil spirit from God came upon Saul.' He tried to kill David. 
Saul cast a javelin to smite David against the wall with it. David 
was nimble and sprang aside, thereby avoiding the deadly stroke. 
David married Saul's daughter, Michal; but Saul remained his 
enemy all the while. David saw himself forced to flee from Saul's 
presence. On one occasion David's wife was the means of saving 
his life, for she let David down through a window, and he fled and 



io6 ' ALL HAIL ' 

escaped. Michal took an image and laid it in the bed, and put a 
pillow of goat's hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth. 
Saul missed David, and sent to the house in quest of him. When 
. Saul's messenger found out what Michal had done, Saul was angry 
at being deceived ; but Michal said he had no cause to kill David, 
and Saul had to give up his evil project for the time. 

On several occasions Jonathan, David's bosom' friend, helped 
David when Saul was pursuing him. These two young men used 
to meet in the woods and in the fields, unknown to Saul. The Book 
of Samuel tells us the following incident. Once Jonathan said to 
David that, to-morrow being a new moon, Saul would miss David 
because his seat would be empty. Jonathan promised David to 
try his best to remove his father's anger against him. He said he 
would give him a sign to show whether he could return or not, ac- 
cording to how matters stood. The sign was to be that Jonathan 
• was to shoot some arrows, and then he was to send a lad to pick 
up the arrows. If Jonathan shot the arrows short of the lad, and 
said (i Samuel, xx. 21), 'Behold the arrows are on this side of thee. 
Take them,' it was to signify that Saul had spent his wrath, and 
that it was safe for David to return. But if Jonathan sent the 
arrows beyond the lad, and said to him, 'Behold, the arrows are 
beyond thee' (verse 22), it was a danger signal. This meant that 
David's life was in peril at the hands of Saul. Jonathan went out 
to see David once more before they parted. He gave the danger 
signal, and, after the lad was gone, David came out from his hiding 
place and the friends kissed each other and wept together, and 
made a promise of eternal fidelity, not only between themselves but 
between their children. This was their last farewell. 

In the course of David's flight after one of his escapes he came 
to Samuel to Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him, 
and he and Samuel went and dwelt at Naioth, i.e., 'the house of 
learning,' the college or school of the prophets just outside Ramah. 
Samuel, the first of the prophets as well as the last of the judges, 
seems to have had a great deal to do with the training of the 
college of the prophets. 

David now goes to Nob, and visits Abimelech the priest. David 
pretends that he has a business to attend to for the king, and on 
this account, having no provisions, he asks the priest to give him five 
loaves of bread in his hand, or what bread there might happen to be 
available. The priest tells David that he has no common bread, 
that there is only hallowed bread. David assures him that he has 
led a virtuous life, and that, therefore, the hallowed bread, the 
shewbread (bread of the presence) could be safely given to him. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 107 

David had to depart, and took refuge with Achish, the king of Gath, 
but he could not venture to remain there. He wandered on and 
came to the cave of Adiillam, where every one who was in distress 
or debt joined him, till he had four hundred men. Thence he 
went to Mizpeh, to the king of Moab, where he had his father and 
mother with him. By this time Saul had discovered where David 
was. The giving of the shewbread had reached the king's ears, 
and Saul slew with the sword by the hand of Doeg the Edomite 
all the priests of Nob for befriending David. 

David remained hidden away in the wilderness and in strongholds, 
such as Engedi, hiding in the mountains as best he could; Saul 
seeking him all the time. IBut God preserved David from his 
enemy's pursuit. 

In the meanwhile, Saul had to fight with his old foes, the Philis- 
tines. No sooner was the fighting over than he again went in pur- 
suit of David in the wilderness of Engedi. 

I Samuel xxiv. verse 2 : 'Saul took three thousand chosen men 
out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the 
rocks of the wild goats (i.e., cliffs). And he came to the sheep- 
cotes by the way where there was a cave ; and Saul went in to cover 
his feet : and David and his men remained in the side of the cave.' 

It thus came to pass that the Lord delivered Saul into the 
hands of David. Saul lay there asleep in the cave in Engedi. 
Here was an opportunity given to David of taking revenge ; but 
this was far from his thoughts. He went into the cave and cut 
off the skirt of Saul's robe, to show him afterwards in order to 
convince him, on his awakening, that David had spared his life. 
David assured his men (verse 6) : 'The Lord forbid that I should 
do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth 
mine hand against him.' Saul rose up and left the cave and went 
his way. David called after him, and, on telling Saul what had 
happened, the latter was much overcome and wept, and was ashamed 
of himself. He thanked David, and said that now he was con- 
vinced of David's goodness and of his own wickedness. Saul ex- 
claimed (verse 20) : 'And now, behold, I know well that thou shalt 
surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in 
thine hand.' David had repaid good for evil ; a remarkable prac- 
tical anticipation of our Lord's example and teaching, which goes 
far to show why David was a man after God's own heart. 

We now hear of David wandering on to the wilderness of Paran. 
Here he encountered a man in Maon, whose possessions were in 
Carm_el. The man was a great stockowner, rich in sheep and goats, 
and it was shearing-time. He was called Nabal, and his wife was 



io8 'ALL HAIL' 

called Abigail, i Samuel xxv. 3: 'She was of good understanding 
and of a beautiful countenance.' Nabal 'was churlish and evil 
in his doings.' He was of the house of Caleb, whom we remember 
at the time of Joshua, the one who had been his travelling compan- 
ion into Canaan, and who had helped him to carry the huge bunch of 
grapes from Eshcol. David had always been civil to the men of Na- 
bal, and therefore felt no compunction in asking Nabal to give him 
some provisions, but the latter answered curtly: 'Who is David? 
and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now a days 
that break away every man from his master. Shall I then take my 
bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, 
and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be' (i Samuel 
xxv. 10). 

David resented such treatment. An outlaw chief with now six 
hundred outlaws at his back, he could have seized with ease and 
without asking leave from any one all Nabal's possessions, and in 
his great moderation he only asked for a little food. His request 
was (verse 8) : 'Give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand 
to thy servants and to. thy son David.' He commanded his men to 
gird on every man his sword. Two hundred went up and two 
hundred men abode by the baggage. This came to the ears of 
Abigail. One of the young men told Abigail (verse 14) : 'Behold 
David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master, 
and he railed upon them' {i.e., flew upon them). 'But the men 
were very good unto us, and we were not hurt, neither missed we 
anything .... they were a wall unto us both by night and 
by day' {i.e., a protection from Bedouin robbers). 

Abigail saw no reason why the two men should not come to 
terms. She made haste and took two hundred loaves and two 
bottles or skins of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five 
measures of parched corn, and an hundred clusters of raisins, and 
two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on asses. 'She said to 
her servants. Go on before me; behold, I come after you. But she 
told not her husband Nabal. And it was so as she rode on the ass 
that she came down by the covert of the hill, and behold, David 

and his men came down against her And when Abigail 

saw David, she hasted and lighted off the ass, and fell before 
David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and fell at his 
feet, and said. Upon me, my lord, let this iniquity be: and let 
thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine audience .... a 
man is risen to pursue thee, and to seek thy soul : but the soul of 
my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God ; 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 109 

and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of 
the middle of a sling' (i Samuel xxv. 19-29). 

Such are the words Abigail speaks to David. She goes on to 
say that David had done no harm to Nabal, and that she recognised 
in David the man chosen by God to be ruler over Israel. She said 
that David had refrained from shedding blood causelessly. She had 
asked David not to think of Nabal any more, because folly was in 
him. Nabal was given to drink, and this was the cause of his 
death. David says to Abigail (verse 33) : 'Blessed be thy advice, 
and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to 
shed blood, and from avenging m3^self with my own hand. For in 
very deed, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, which hath kept me 
back from hurting thee, except that thou hadst hasted and come to 
meet me, surely there had not been left to Nabal by the morning 
light a single man. So David received of her hand that which she 
had brought him', and said unto her, Go up in peace to thine house. 
See I have hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person.' 

After Nabal's death the servants of David came to Carmel and 
told her that David had sent them to seek her to be his wife. She 
arose and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and said (verse 
41) : 'Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of 
the servants of my lord.' Abigail hastened and rode upon an ass, 
with five of her damsels following her; and she went with the mes- 
sengers of David and became his wife. This is an interesting epi- 
sode in David's life as an outlaw. 

But we must get back to Saul and see what happened next. After 
David's having spared his life, one would be inclined to think that 
Saul would have learnt his lesson, and mended his wicked ways. 
This was not the case. Saul continued to pursue David. Soon 
Saul was again at the mercy of David. Saul was in a trench 
(rather 'amid the wagons') asleep, 'the people pitched round about 
him' (i Samuel xxvi. verse 5), at the hill of Hachilah before 
Jeshimon. His spear was stuck in the ground at his bolster, and his 
cruse of water was beside him. Both of these David took away, 
again as a proof to show how easily he could have killed Saul. 

David turned a deaf ear to the proposal of Abishai (verse 8) : 
'Let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth 
at once (R.V. at one stroke) and I will not smite him the second 
time.' David rebuked Abishai and said (verse 11) : 'The Lord for- 
bid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord's an- 
ointed So David took the spear and the cruse of water 

from Saul's bolster; and they gat them away.' And David went 



no 'ALL HAIL' 

over to the other side, and stood on the top of the hill, a great space 
being between them, and called and reproached Saul first, and then 
showed him' the spear and the cruse he had taken. David again 
showed Saul how he had spared his life, and how unjustly Saul 
was seeking his life. Saul acknowledged his wrong-doing and 
said (verse 21) : 'I have sinned .... behold, I have played 
the fool, and have erred exceedingly.' Saul ended up by saying 
(verse 25) : 'Blessed be thou, my son David. Thou shalt both do 
great things, and also shalt still prevail.' 

David did not accept Saul's invitation to return, for he no longer 
trusted him; and they parted never to meet again. Saul upon hear- 
ing that David had gone to Gath, left ofif pursuing him. Meanwhile 
the Philistines gathered themselves together and pitched in Shunem, 
and Saul gathered all his men together and pitched in Gilboa. Saul 
began to feel the pangs of a guilty conscience ; and he was sore 
afraid. He inquired of the Lord, but received no answers, either 
by dreams or prophets. He was most melancholy, and he knew full 
well that he had forfeited the Lord's protection. In his oppressed 
condition of mind, the last thing he could think of was to seek and 
question a witch, though he had himself put away those who had 
familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land. 

This woman belonged to a place called Endor, i Samuel xxvii. 8 : 
'^Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, 
and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night.' 
The woman who had a familiar spirit (we would say a medium, 
LXX. says a ventriloquist) was unable to give him' any comfort. 
Saul's only companions were his self-reproaches and his pangs of 
conscience. Saul asked the woman (verse 11) : 'Bring me up 
Samuel.' When the woman saw Samuel, she recognised Saul, and 
said to him (verse 12) : 'Why hast thou deceived me ? for thou 
art Saul' And Saul asked the woman (verse 14) ; 'What form is 
he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered 
with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel.' Probably 
the 'witch' described Samuel, and spoke his words. 

Samuel warned Saul of his impending overthrow. Saul had not 
eaten bread all day or all night, and fell straightway all along the 
earth at the words of the supposed Samuel. Probably the witch of 
Endor (the ventriloquist), recognised in Saul's coming to her by 
night (against his own laws to stop necromancy), and in his de- 
pression and terror that he was hard pressed by the Philistines, and 
that he knew that he was not likely to emerge from the conflict 
with his life. Incidentally this throws light on the belief of the 
Israelites in a future life at that time. Saul, a rough, uneducated 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS OX THE BIBLE in 

warrior, believed in the life of the dead in the dark under-world of 
'Sheol/ but did not regard going to Sheol as amthing but a disaster. 

The end soon came. The Philistines fought against Israel. The 
Israelites were defeated, and many fell slain in battle on mount 
Gilboa. The Philistines slew three of Saul's sons, one of whom 
was Jonathan. The battle went sore against the Israelites. The 
archers hit Saul, and he was severely wounded. Saul implored his 
armour-bearer to thrust his sword through him, and put an end to 
his sufferings : but the man's heart failed him ; so Saul took his own 
sword and fell upon it Thus came to a direful end the warrior 
king and his family. Saul brought misery- on himself, on his chil- 
dren, and on all the Israelites. It is the old, old stor}' which is 
ever new: people cannot learn obedience from long centuries of 
others' experiences : they cannot remember that the wages of dis- 
obedience are disaster and death. 

We see that the request of the Israelites to have a king had not 
brought blessings on them. They had to pay for their wilfulness. 
In the First Book of Samuel we learn that the prophet Samuel, 
after he had come to be a very old man, died. He was honestly and 
deeply mourned by the children of Israel. In spite of their having 
chosen to have a king, Samuel had played a great part in Israel. In 
spite of his objections to the abandonment of the spiritual Kingship 
of God, he did more than any one to establish the monarchy. Guided 
by God, he chose and anointed the first two kings, Saul and David. 
He had himself long exercised ruling powers as a judge over 
Israel. He was the best and the greatest of the Judges, and the 
first of the Prophets. He welded together into a nation the scat- 
tered and disunited tribes. 

He made religion a realit\- by founding the order of the prophets 
or speakers for God, who moved men to keep the old Mosaic faith 
as the priests had long ceased to do. The order of prophets, or 
preachers, went through the land from shrine to shrine, somewhat 
as mission preachers go from church to church in modem times. 
To Samuel the life of the nation seemed to be founded on fidelity' 
to God; and the colleges of prophets w^hich he established had a 
national purpose as well as a religious purpose. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
II. Samuel (David). 

We have now come to the Second Book of Samuel. The first 
chapter begins with a vivid account of the arrival of an Amalekite 
bringing the news of the death of Saul and Jonathan, and with a 
glimpse of David's exceeding grief on hearing of the death of King 
Saul and of his beloved friend Jonathan. David rent his clothes, 
the outward and visible sign of mourning. David's lamentation 
for Saul and Jonathan is very touching and full of true poetry, the 
poetry of one who had yet to win a great reputation by his Psalms. 
The concluding lines of the poem are full of the aching void of a 
great love lost. 2 Samuel i. verses 26, 27 : T am distressed for thee, 
my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy 
love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are 
the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished !' 

After Saul's death, Abner, Saul's chief officer, set up Ishbosheth, 
Saul's son, as king over Israel, and there was civil war till Ishbosh- 
eth was slain by two of his captains. After this all the tribes came 
to Hebron to David to ask him to be king. 2 Samuel v. 1-9: 'We 
are thy bone and thy flesh. Also in time past, when Saul was 
king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel 
. . . . and King David made a league with them in Hebron 
before the Lord; and they anointed David king over Israel. David 
was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty 
years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six 
months : and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years. 
. . . . And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the 

Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land So David dwelt 

in the fort and called it the city of David. And David built round 
about from Millo and inward.' 

David never forgot Jonathan. We read in 2 Samuel ix, i of a 
very touching incident about this lasting love. David says : 'Is there 
yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kind- 
ness for Jonathan's sake?' Ziba, a servant of theirs, came forward 
and said that Jonathan had yet a son left who was lame on his 
feet. David had him fetched out of the house of Macher, the son 
of Ammiel, from Lodebar, where he was living. Mephibosheth 
— for that was the lame man's name — fell on his face before David, 
and made obeisance to him. The latter told him not to fear; that 

112 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 113 

he would, on Jonathan's account, restore to him all the land that 
belonged to Saul. David told Mephibosheth that he should eat of 
David's bread at his table continually. The poor lame man ans- 
wered that he was but a dead dog for David to show him so much 
kindness. Ziba and his family remained servants in Mephibosheth's 
household. 

Anybody who visits Jerusalem to-day can still clearly distin- 
guish the different ages of the work of the tower of David. There 
you see nearest the ground the huge stones which the Jebusites 
employed for their building. On the top of their work you trace the 
smaller bricks employed by the workers in the time of David. 2 
Samuel v. 10 : 'David went out and grew great, and the Lord God of 
hosts was with him. And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to 
David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons : and they built 
David an house. And David perceived that the Lord had estab- 
lished him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom 
for his people Israel's sake.' 

David arose and went with all the people, thirty thousand men, to 
bring from Judah the Ark of God up to Zion. 2 Samuel vi. 5 : 
'David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all 
manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps and on 
psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals.' David 
thus brought up the ark to Zion in safety. 

Thus far David had been a true servant of God. At this time 
he was tempted from the path of duty. David was but a man, and 
therefore was not perfect. He did that which was wrong in the 
sight of God. He took to himself a woman he ought not to have 
taken, who was called Bathsheba, and he afterwards made her his 
wife. She was a married woman, and her husband Uriah was a 
faithful soldier of the King; and his death was deliberately ar- 
ranged by treachery of the king, and complicity of Joab his general, 
in order to free Bathsheba from her husband, so that David might 
be able to marry her. This was clearly a most wicked thing to do, 
and David had to bear the consequences of his sin. The Lord 
brought it home to his conscience by means of His prophet. Na- 
than, the prophet, was a trusted adviser of the king. The Lord 
sent him to the king, and made him speak in a parable. This 
means that he told him a story, in order to bring what he had done 
home to his mind. 

Nathan said (2 Samuel xii. i) : 'There were two men in one city; 
the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding 
many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one 
little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it 



114 'ALL HAIL' 

grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his 
own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and 
was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the 
rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own 
herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him: but 
took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come 
to him. And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; 
and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done 
this thing shall surely die: and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, 
because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.' 

So far David had shown the greatest interest in this story. Little 
did he think what was coming. Nathan looked him full in the 
face and said (verse 7), 'Thou art the man!' He reminded David 
that the Lord had made him King over Israel ; that He had de- 
livered David out of the hand of Saul; that He had given him the 
house of Israel and of Judah; and that he had blessed him in every 
way. David had not realised how rich he was in blessings, and 
had taken a poor man's wife. Nathan goes on to tell David how 
great is the evil he has done in the sight of God by killing Uriah 
the Hittite with the sword of the children of Ammon, and then 
taking his wife to be his own wife. Nathan tells David that on this 
account the sword shall never depart from his house ; that David 
had disgraced Uriah secretly, but the Lord would bring disgrace 
and dishonour upon him publicly before all Israel, and before the 
sun. David's and Bathsheba's child died, and David had brought 
a beginning of misery upon himself and his home. We read of 
his sons falling out among themselves, brother slaying brother, and 
one of them conspiring against his own father, so that there was 
strife and bloodshed in his family. 

Now we have to continue the history of David's punishment, and 
learn what unhappiness he had prepared for himself. Amongst his 
many sons there was one in particular called Absalom, whom he 
loved most tenderly. H'e was beautiful and attractive and a popular 
favourite, and' was distinguished by his very long hair. This son 
caused his father David his greatest sorrow. Absalom had killed 
his brother Amnon in revenge for his ill-usage of his sister and 
fled to Geshur, the kingdom of his grandfather. Joab acted as an 
intermediary to induce the king to forgive Absalom, and brought 
him back to Jerusalem. There Absalom dwelt two years without 
seeing the king's face, because he had murdered his brother. At 
last the king forgave Absalom, and received him back into favour. 
Absalom now used his position to win the hearts of the people 
from the king. After four years' time Absalom judged that the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 115 

moment had come to strike. He asked the kmg's leave to go to 
Hebron to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, and he said, 'Go in peace' 
(2 Samuel xv. 9). At Hebron he raised the standard of rebellion. 
He had already sent secret emissaries throughout all Israel, saying 
(verse 10) : 'As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye 
shall say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron.' That is to say, he was to 
be proclaimed king simultaneously all over the land. 

The bad news reached David, and he at once decided to flee with 
his servants from Jerusalem. An episode of the flight throws light 
on the character of David. David had a bodyguard of Philistines, 
which came after him from Gath, and the commander was a dis- 
tinguished Philistine, Ittai the Gittite. David, about to fly, thought 
of the safety of Ittai and his bodyguard, and advised Ittai to leave 
him and join Absalom. This was a very generous offer, depriving 
David of the best of the few men who still held to him, and a very 
thoughtful, delicate act of unselfishness which made it easy for 
Ittai to join Absalom without the slightest reflection on his fidelity 
to David. But Ittai was equal to the king in magnanimity. He 
answered (verse 21) : 'As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king 
liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in 
death or life, even there also will thy servant be.' The king's gen- 
erosity had strengthened Ittai's devotion, and instead of losing his 
bodyguard David had them with him, heart and soul, however dark 
his prospects. Here we see the secret of David's extraordinary suc- 
cess in dealing with men. He appealed to what was best in them 
by showing them what was best in himself. 

When David heard that Ahithophel was among the conspirators 
with Absalom, he was dismayed, and he asked his friend, Hushai, 
to join Absalom, and do his best to defeat the counsel of Ahithophel. 
Hushai was successful, and persuaded Absalom and the elders of 
Israel who were with him not to follow the wise advice of Ahitho- 
phel, who asked for twelve thousand men to pursue David that very 
night, and cut him off at once. When Ahithophel saw his counsel 
was not followed, he went home and hanged himself, knowing all 
hope of success was gone. The king retired to Mahanaim, on the 
other side of Jordan, and there gathered an army. He consented 
against his will to let his army go out against Absalom's army, 
while he himself remained at Mahanaim. The battle took place in 
the wood of Ephraim. David's men completely defeated Absalom's 
men, and twenty thousand of the latter were slain. 2 Samuel xviii. 
9 : 'Absalom met the servants of David, and Abaslom rode on a 
mule' (a sign of his kingship), 'the mule went under the thick 
boughs of a great oak and his head caught hold of the oak, and he 



Ii6 'ALL HAIL' 

was taken up between the heaven and the earth ; and the mule that 
was under him went away.' The news that he was hanging in an 
oak was brought to Joab. He blamed his informant for not killing 
him, and went himself with three darts in his hand, and thrust them 
through the heart of Absalom while he was still alive in the midst 
of the oak, and the ten young men who bore Joab's armour finished 
the slaughter. 

Our picture is most interesting. We find it on the same pavement 
of the cathedral in Siena where we already found the Philistine 
giant, Goliath. We see the cruel warriors spearing the helpless 
man, and we catch a glimpse of the last half of the mule slowly dis- 
appearing riderless. David had given special orders, before his 
army went out to battle, to Joab, Abishai, and Ittai (verse 5) : 
'Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom.' 
The whole army was dismayed, and 'all Israel fled, every man to his 
tent' (verse 17), for they had all heard David's order. Two mes- 
sengers were sent with the news, Ahimaaz and an Ethiopian slave 
of Joab's. Ahimaaz arrived first, and found David, in his eagerness, 
sitting between the two gates in the gateway of the city, anxiously 
awaiting news from the army. He called to the king 'All is well' 
(verse 28), and fell on his face before the king, and said that God 
had delivered up the rebels. The king had only one thought in his 
heart and one question on his lips (verse 29) : 'Is the young man 
Absalom safe?' Ahimaaz did not know. Then the Ethiopian ar- 
rived and said (verse 31) : 'Tidings, my lord the king: for the Lord 
hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee.' 
And the king said to the Ethiopian : 'Cushi' (i.e., the man of Gush, 
Gush being Ethiopia), verse 32: 'Is the young man Absalom safe?' 
Then Gushi (i.e., the Ethiopian) answered: 'The enemies of my 
lord the king, and all that rise against thee do thee hurt, be as that 
young man is.' And the king was much moved, and went up to the 
chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went thus he said : 'O 
my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom ! would God that I had 
died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!' (2 Samuel xviii. 33). 

Here we have the completion of David's punishment ; the results 
that had followed out of the sin with Bathsheba. Absalom's ad- 
viser in his rebellion was Ahithophel, the grandfather of Bathsheba. 
We can see that David had brought all this upon himself, though 
it was equally true that it was God's judgment for his sin, the grad- 
ual working of God's inexorable moral law. Yet for the moment 
all that David seems to have thought of was his son, his lost son, 
and the contrast between what was and what might have been. 

Before going on with any more of the history of David, it will 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 117 

be well to have a little talk together about something the Bible 
speaks of. We know it is said in the Bible concerning David that 
he was a man after God's own heart. When we realise that he 
sinned much as others did before and after him, we cannot but 
pause to think why the Bible distinctly calls David a man after 
God's own heart. By no means let us lose our chance of ascer- 
taining what this signifies. God loved sinful David. We know that 
he stra3^ed from God's commandments. Through trials he had to 
be purified. Instead of allowing our surprise to run away with 
us, let us have comfort and hope from the fact that the Lord con- 
siders sinful David worthy of so high regard. God does not cast 
him out as worthless ; no, indeed, God has infinite patience with 
him. David's sin was just the very means of his returning to God. 
David feels his utter inability to work out his own salvation. Only 
by bringing his heavy burden to the Lord was it possible for help 
to come to him. 

We know David's feelings, the progress of his consciousness of 
sin, and his repentance, and his growth of love and trust in God, 
for we have a wonderful record of these in his Psalms. How great, 
then, is our consolation ; we who are ordinary mortals, and far 
weaker even than David. Wliat a wonderful thing it is for us 
to know that our Heavenly Father looks down in pity upon us, and 
is ready to pick us up when we fall, and to give each one of us a 
new start. There is a wise old proverb that says, Tt is never too 
late to mend;' and Tennyson, with even deeper insight, writes, 
'Men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher 
things.' 

A glance at David's character will give us a deeper insight into 
the reasons for accepting him as the man after God's own heart. 
Dean Stanley, an excellent judge of character, says, Tn the com- 
plexity of the elements, passion, tenderness, generosity, fierceness 
— the soldier, the shepherd, the poet — the statesman, the priest, the 
prophet, the king — the romantic friend, the chivalrous leader, the 
devoted father — there is no character in the Old Testament at all 
to be compared to that of David.' 

Thomas Carlyle, in his Heroes and Hero Worship, says 'David 
. . . . had fallen into sins enough — blackest crimes ; there was 
no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, 
"Is this your man according to God's own heart?*' The sneer, I 
must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults? What 
are the outward details of a life if the inner secret of it — the re- 
morse, temptations (often baffled), never-ended struggle of it, be 
forgotten? .... David's life and history, as written for us 



ii8 'ALL HAIL' 

in those psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emhlem ever 
given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All 
earnest souls will recognise in it the faithful strugle of an earnest 
human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, 
sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; 
ever with tears, with repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun 
anew.' 

How often do we see people who are blessed with happiness tak- 
ing this happiness as a matter of course. We ourselves forget to 
thank God for mercies we enjoy daily, which though we take them 
as a matter of course, are mercies all the same. Our sight, our 
hearing, our health, we take all in the most matter-of-fact way, 
merely as our right. There are others who have to forego many 
of life's most coveted blessings ; and these are often much the bet- 
ter for their education of denial. God wishes us never to forget 
Him. We are not meant to expect happiness, but we are to be 
thankful when it comes to us. In just the same way we are to be 
thankful when the Lord sends us the discipline of troubles. To God 
we are to turn in gratitude for everything, be it pleasant or be it 
that which tries us, and which is sent for our good just the same. 
David was being educated, and each event in his life was a step 
onwards and upwards, faltering as was his gait. A thing which 
is easily won affords us no opportunity for lasting benefit. What 
does us good in the getting is something got with difficulty, some- 
thing which brings out our courage, our endurance, our perserver- 
ance, and which acts on our character like a tonic on our consti- 
tution. It is in battling against the flesh and the powers of dark- 
ness that we daily become stronger, and, step by step, are able 
to climb up the steep hill and walk in the narrow way, thus be- 
coming more acceptable in the eyes of our loving Heavenly Father. 

We may rest assured without question that it is by no means hap- 
piness or misery which makes or mars us. It is far more what we 
make of the given circumstances and conditions of our life which 
works a blessing on us. 'All things,' says the Bible, 'work together 
for good to them that love God' (Romans viii. 28). Come what 
may, we ought to be able to realise this more and more. Thus we 
arrive at our conclusions. It was because David realised his posi- 
tion towards God that he put his whole trust in the Lord, and en 
this account the Lord looked upon David with favour, as one in His 
special care and keeping. We hear how fond David was of music. 
He is called the sweet singer of Israel, the sweet psalmist. The 
spirit of the Lord spoke to him, and His Word was in David's 
mouth. He was a great poet, too. We have already read and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 119 

admired some of his poetry, some lines of his fine elegy on the 
death of his enemy Saul and of his friend Jonathan. God had en- 
dowed him with lovely qualities, and had given him a wonderful 
manysidedness. His life was a rich one and an interesting one. 

All men are sinful : even the great ones, patriarchs, lawgivers, 
judges, kings, prophets, all transgress the moral law. While on the 
one hand we deplore it, on the other hand it is for our encourage- 
ment. We learn that the people in the Bible are not diifferent from 
us in nature. We learn that if there was help and hope in store for 
them, surely the same is not denied to us who are of the present 
day. The old familiar Bible characters have everything in common 
with us who live to-day. We have every reason to take courage. 
But instead of judging the people of those days harshly for sinning, 
let us acknowledge our own sins and failings. We ought to be 
humble ; we ought to be ashamed that we have made no better 
progress : that we often prefer darkness to light : that we are feeble 
instead of strong for Christ. Has not our Blessed Saviour come 
down for us since Old Testament days? What is our position to- 
day? What are we doing on earth for Christ? 

Just let us imagine Abraham and Moses and David looking down 
from Heaven on us to-day. Have not they reason to censure us, 
to wonder at our failure to use our far greater privileges and 
means of grace? Have they not reason to find fault with our sloth, 
with our persistence in evil, with our poor and feeble results? 
Surely to our shame we must acknowledge that we are not less 
stiff-necked than were the Israelites of old. 

The very psalms we read most eagerly and learn and love to-day 
bear the name of David. Out of the fulness of his heart, the Psalm- 
ist poured out all he felt towards his Creator. As a shepherd-boy, 
he probably acquired the experience embodied in Psalm xxiii. : 
'The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. He maketh me to 
lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters, 
. . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil : for thou are with me ; Thy rod and Thy 
staff they comfort me.' 

King David was able to put himself perfectly into the whole 
situation, having lived through it all. Again he sings : 'When I 
consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the 
stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mind- 
ful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou 
hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him 
with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over 
the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: 



120 'ALL HAIL' 

all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field Oh, 

Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth' (Psalm 
viii. 3). 

One wonders whether one may accept the origin of Psalm xxxiv., 
'when he feigned madness before Abimelech' ( ? Achish) (verse ii) : 
'Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of 
the Lord. What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, 
that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips 
from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good ; seek peace, 
and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his 
ears are open unto their cry.' 

We all love the Book of Psalms in our Bible, and when we have 
time we ought to learn our own special favourites off by heart. Then 
v/hen you go and sit with that dear old woman over the hill, in that 
pretty clean cottage of hers, and read to her, you will see how she 
too appreciates the psalms. Her wrinkles become smooth ; her face 
lights up with a smile ; and she confides to you that you have chosen 
her very favourite one. It is lovely to have some one to share things 
with. That makes all the difference in one's life. That dear old 
woman, sitting in her high-backed armchair at her fireside with 
her white cap on, and three-cornered shawl, handed down to her 
from her grandmother, has seen a long life passing by. She has 
had sorrow, and has become acquainted with jo}'. She has lots to 
tell you about. Her husband was a sailor in the long ago: and she 
gave him God-speed on many an occasion, and God protected him 
for her to give him many a welcome back home. 

On one memorable occasion God thought fit to welcome the sailor 
home above unto Himself : for he had been faithful and he de- 
served his rest. It was a winter's night. Cold and strong blew 
the wind: high and wild tossed and foamed the sea waves. Her 
anxious heart grieved for her man, to God she turned, she prayed 
and read and learned how God is strong to save : how He can calm 
the storm not only of His natural world, but of a human heart. 
Ever since that night she is a saddened woman; but peace has 
come to her. She can in confidence lift up her eyes and look out 
to the calm sea and deep blue sky ; both lie smiling before her. She 
is waiting just a little while longer, and knows there is beyond for 
her God's own glorious Haven where her dear one is expecting her, 
and where there will be a meeting to part no more. Together you 
and she will be singing hymns; she, with her shaky and trembling 
voice; you, with the freshness and sweetness of youth. Your en- 
deavours to bring cheer and comfort to this old friend of yours 
will reach the throne of God on high and will be acceptable to Him. 



CHAPTER IX. 

I. Kings (Solomon— Division of the Kingdom — Elijah — Ahab). 

We now begin the first of the two Books of Kmgs. These relate 
the history of the kings of Israel, from the accession of Solomon 
to the Babylonian captivity. We read about the united kingdom 
under Solomon; then later on how it was divided, and fell into two 
parts ; then how the kingdom of Judah alone remained, the kingdom' 
of Israel being entirely swept away. 

I Kings i. verse i begins thus : 'Now king David was old and 
stricken in years.' Before his death he appointed the best of the 
sons who had been spared to him. His name was Solomon, and he 
became perhaps the most powerful of the kings of Israel. David 
sent his own mule to fetch Solomon and bring him to him down to 
Gihon. The priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan were appointed 
to anoint him king of Israel and ruler of Judah. David ordered a 
trumpet to be blown, and commanded the people to shout for joy. 
'And the people said, God save king Solomon. And all the people 
came up after him, and the people piped with pipes, and rejoiced 
with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them' 
(verses 39, 40). 

When messengers came to him to congratulate him on his son's 
accession. King David bowed himself upon the bed. 'Now the days 
of David drew nigh that he should die,' and he charged Solomon 
his son, saying (I Kings ii. 2) : 'I go the way of all the earth: be 
thou strong therefore, and show thyself a man ; and keep the charge 
of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways.' Few and plain words, 
such as any father might say to any son. But the whole world's wis- 
dom' is contained in these simple words : To be strong for good ; 
to be a man in the true sense; to be truthful, courageous, just, and 
God-fearing. Solomon was to walk in God's ways. He was to keep 
the Lord's commandments and His judgments and His testimonies, 
according to the law of Moses. Doing all this, Solomon would be 
blessed and prosperous. Provided that Solomon and all Israel 
walked in truth, and with all their hearts before God, all would be 
well. Such were David's dying words to his son. Then, after 
leaving some ugly legacies of personal vengeance to his son, which 
show us how far the religion of that day was from Christ, he was 
laid to rest in the city of David. 

121 



122 ' ALL HAIL ' 

David's reign was ever afterwards looked upon by the nation as 
the golden age of Israel, and the promise of a still more golden 
future. What were David's achievements? First, his achievements 
as a soldier and statesman. 

In the period before his fall, which was the most successful period 
of his reign, he carried his conquests into Asia as far as the banks 
of the Euphrates. He organized a mighty army ; the host which 
was commanded by Joab, the captain of the host; and there were 
besides a bodyguard of picked mercenaries, at one time at least 
largely composed of Philistines, headed by Ittai, the Gittite, of whom' 
we have already read. 

David had more than the power of Napoleon for inspiring per- 
sonal devotion, as was shown in the way his mercenaries kept true 
to him in Absalom's rebellion in the darkest period of reverse, and 
in such episodes as the way his mighty men risked their lives 
against the Philistines to give him a moment's pleasure when they 
fetched the water to him in the cave of Adullam from the well of 
Bethlehem by the Gate. 

But David gave to the nation not only a mighty empire won by 
the sword. In a very true sense it may be said he made the tribes 
into a nation, or at least completed the process begun by his master 
in statecraft, Samuel. The monarchy he established was not an 
Eastern despotism. The king's power was limited by the power of 
God. David felt himself to be God's representative. This kind of 
monarchy was what Samuel had worked for, for Saul was rejected 
for acting independently without regard for God. David was not 
always successful in keeping to his high ideal, but he aimed at it 
continually in spite of failures and falls. This high aim was what 
made him long remembered as Israel's greatest king, greatest cer- 
tainly from a religious point of view. 

The man}^ misfortunes which followed David's fall, and made the 
latter part of his reign a period of so much depression, culminate 
in the narrative of the last chapter (2 Samuel xxiv.). David was 
moved by pride and ambition, in spite of the remonstrance of Joab, 
to number Israel from Dan to Beersheba at this time. This was 
done in the pride of David's heart, and on that account was not 
acceptable to the Lord. His anger was kindled against Israel. 
David had lent himself to wrong-doing: and his heart smote him'. 
He acknowledged his sin. A prophet called Gad came before David, 
and told him that God had ordained that he should be punished for 
his wrongdoing. The Lord gave him a choice of three punish- 
ments. Either a seven months' famine was to waste the land; or 
David was to flee three months before his enemies ; or a three 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 123 

days' pestilence was to be sent. Preferring to fall into the hands 
of the Lord rather than of man, the pestilence, the sword of the 
Lord, was David's choice. 

2 Samuel xxiv. verse 15: 'So the Lord sent a pestilence upon 
Israel from' the morning even to the time appointed : and there 
died of the people from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men. 
And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to de- 
stroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel 
that destroyed the people. It is enough; stay now thine hand. 
And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing place of Araunah 

the Jebusite And God came that day to David, and said 

unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the Lord in the threshing floor 
of Araunah the Jebusite.' 

David and Araunah had a talk together about the buying of this 
threshing floor, Araunah wanted to make David a present of it, 
but this the latter would not consent to. He said, 'Nay; but I will 
surely buy it of thee at a price; neither will I offer burnt offerings 
unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing' (2 Sam- 
uel xxiv. 24). So he bought it for fifty shekels of silver, and Arau- 
nah gave him oxen for burnt sacrifices and threshing instruments 
for firing. This identical threshing floor can be seen, it is said, at 
the present day. It forms the centre of the interior of the exquisite 
Mosque of Omar in the middle of the Temple area in Jerusalem. 
The natural rock of the primitive threshing floor is there, with a 
gallery to walk in all round the rock. A Turkish Sultan built this 
mosque over two hundred years ago, in order to preserve this histor- 
ical site. To this same threshing floor tradition tells us that Abra- 
ham brought his son for sacrifice. On this same rock Solomon's 
temple stood. On this same rock Herod built his temple. Wonder- 
ful exceedingly is the place with its unique wealth of sacred associa- 
tions. 

I Kings chapter iii. : 'And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh 
king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into 
the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own 
house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem 
round about.' 

As yet there was no house built on purpose for worship. The 
people sacrificed and burnt incense in high places, as being nearer 
Heaven. Solomon loved the Lord and walked in the statutes of 
David ; and one day he went up to Gibeon to sacrifice, and at Gibeon 
the Lord appeared to him in a dream by night, and said, 'Ask what 
I shall give thee' (i Kings iii. 5). Solomon said the Lord had 
showed his father David great mercy in every way, and that now 



124 ' ALL HAIL ' 

lie had come to be king he wished to do his duty, i Kings iii. 7-9 : 
Solomon said, 'I am but a little child : I know not how to go out or 
to come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which 
thou hast chosen; a great people that cannot be numbered nor 
counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understand- 
ing heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and 
bad : for who is able to judge this thy so great a people ?' 

Was not this the very best possible thing King Solomon could 
have asked for ? He felt that he had so much to learn : he could 
only accomplish his task by being given God's help. He desired 
most ardently to become good and wise for a good purpose and 
to do good. He prayed hard to the Lord to grant to him all the 
necessary precious gifts. Can we say that we too last night prayed 
to God to make us good and wise? I wonder what it is that we 
most desire God's help in? Solomon was a great and mighty 
king. We are nothing of the kind, but to all of us the Lord has 
given a heart and soul. God starts us fair on our life's race : it 
h for us to look to our opportunities, and not to lose them. But 
never must it be supposed that it is our strength which will carry 
us through : it is God's power which enables us to reach our goal, 
provided we commit our ways to Him. 

As regards Solomon's request the Bible says (i Kings iii. verse 

10) : 'The speech pleased the Lord And God said unto 

him,. Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for 
thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast 
asked the life of thine enemies ; but hast asked for thyself under- 
standing to discern judgment; behold, I have done according to 
thy words : lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding 
heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after 
thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also given thee 
that which thou hast not asked, both riches and honour : so that 
there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days. 
And if thou wilt walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my 
commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen 
thy days. And Solomon awoke ; and, behold, it was a dream.' 

Thus Solomon found favour in the eyes of the Lord. But Solo- 
mon was human ; and by his marriage with Pharaoh's daughter 
he had already begun his transgressions. This means he was 
tempted and fell grievously. With all his splendour he was weak 
in the pride of the flesh, Solomon had to be taught the lesson of hu- 
mility. That was what he lacked. This weakness was at the 
root of his character, and proved to be his great failing. His 
success became too much for him, and he lost self-control and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 125 

moderation. Here is a lesson for us to learn. Does not this case 
of Solomon point to the fact that a privilege and a distinction can 
easily be turned into a curse; can easily bring us a great amount 
of trouble unless properly guarded and kept in its own place? 
Everything in our lives has to be kept within bounds ; has to serve 
us and not become our master. Things must not be allowed to 
get into the saddle and ride mankind. Solomon became spoilt: 
his wealth, his wisdom, his position, all combined to turn his head. 
As life went on he allowed himself to be luxurious : his acts were 
tainted : misery then came to himself as well as to his family. 

In the early part of his career he had an opportunity given him 
of displaying his wisdom in a very remarkable way. We will see 
now what this was. Look at our picture. Two women had come 
to King Solomon. Each of them had had a baby; one baby was 
living and was brought before the king, and one was dead. Both 
women claimed the living child. They had come before the king 
for judgment, and he was to settle which was the real mother. 
One woman of course was speaking the truth, the other a false- 
hood. How was King Solomon going to find out the truth, and 
restore the live baby to the rightful mother? There in our pic- 
ture he sits on his throne ! And he bethinks himself. After a 
while he speaks. He orders a sword to be brought; he commands 
one of his men to cut the live baby in two, and give each woman 
a half. Look at the man holding up the poor child. We shudder 
to think what is going to happen. Then one of the two women 
implores the king to spare the life of the child ; rather than have 
it cut in two she prefers giving it up to the other woman. The 
other woman, on the contrary, says, 'Let it be neither mine nor 
thine, but divide it.' Here was the wished-for revelation. Solo- 
mon had brought it to pass in this way. By the real mother's un- 
selfish love of her child, contrasted with the callousness of the 
other woman, everybody was convinced which was the true mother. 
No time was lost in giving her back her own child. In conse- 
quence of this judgment Solomon's fame spread through all the 
land. 

All Israel saw that it was the Lord who was working in King 
Solomon for their good. Solomon appointed officers all over the 
country to administer justice, and the people were contented and 
prosperous. King Hiram of Tyre sent servants to Solomon when 
he heard that they had anointed him king instead of David. Solo- 
mon drew King Hiram's attention to the fact that on account of 
his many wars David, his father, had had no time to build a house 
unto the name of the Lord his God. Solomon said that as he 



126 'ALL HAIL' 

was enjoying rest on every side he proposed to build a house for 
the Lord. He asked King Hiram to hew him cedar trees out of 
Lebanon; he said their servants should work together. Hiram 
was delighted to comply with Solomon's request: he promised that 
his Sidonian servants should bring down timber of cedar and tim- 
ber of fir from Lebanon unto the sea ; he would order it to be 
conveyed by sea to whatever place Solomon might appoint, and 
Hiram would cause it to be discharged there. This place is now 
known as Jaffa. In return Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand 
measures of wheat for food for his household, and twenty meas- 
ures of pure oil year by year. 

There was peace between these two monarchs, and they made 
a league together. Solomon sent a levy of thirty thousand men to 
Lebanon to work there. He began to use forced labour — a fatal 
course — very likely sugested by Pharaoh's daughter, who was ac- 
customed to it in Egypt. Threescore and ten thousand that bore 
burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers worked in the mountains. 
And there were officers over the work to rule over the people 
who wrought. Then the king commanded them to bring great 
stones, and costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation 
of the house. And all this came to pass in the four hundred and 
eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the 
land of Egypt, and in the fourth year of King Solomon's reign 
over Israel. 

This temple was to be most costly and ijiost beautiful. It was 
to be similar to but double the length and breadth of the Taber- 
nacle. To realise its glory we mtist turn to the sixth and seventh 
chapters of the First Book of Kings. After seven years it was 
completed, and then Solomon built himself a beautiful house, and 
that is all described in chapter seven. 

I Kings viii. verse i: 'Then Solomon assembled the elders of 
Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chief of the fathers of 
the children of Israel unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they 
might bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the 
city of David, which is Zion .... And the priests brought 
in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto his place 'into the ora- 
cle of the house to the most holy place, even under the wings of 

the cherubims There was nothing in the ark save the 

two tables , of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when the 
Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came 
out of the land of Egypt. And it came to pass when the priests 
were come out of the holy place that the cloud filled the house of 
the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 127 

cf the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the 
Lord.' 

This was God's sign of His approval of what had been done. 
All the Israelites who gathered in the Temple that day were once 
more reminded of and impressed with the fact of God's Presence 
v/ith them and amongst them. God, we see, is a living force. 
He wishes to impress us. He imparts Himself to each one of us, 
if only we keep our ears and eyes open, and our conscience clear. 
His face shines upon us and we are warmed with His love. But 
we can only feel this so long as we keep our hearts open to God 
and do not, as it were, shut ourselves up in a darkened room' with 
all the blinds down and the curtains drawn. In all creation there 
is not one man, woman, or child who has not God at his side, if 
only he stands at attention and is ready for God to speak to him 
and to direct him. God's Presence must not be looked upon as an 
exceptional thing, but we must watch and pray continually. We 
must be ever on the look-out, ever keen, ever on duty, like trust- 
worthy soldiers, and we must be ready for God's call. All the 
Israelites knew that the Lord was with them. Next time when 
we go to church, let us think of Solomon's temple, and let us pray 
that God, in His mercy, may deign to be with us. We are meant 
to pray at home naturally, not merely in temple, church, or chapel. 
We are to pray anywhere and everywhere, for, as our hymn tells 
us, 'Prayer is the heart's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.' 

In our own little room, in our family circle, God hears us as 
well as out in the open. He hears us on the land and on the sea. 
Our prayers reach Him on a mountain-top, in a desert, no matter 
where we may be. That is the beauty of God's bounty to us. And 
more marvellous still, God is never too mtich occupied, never too 
great to pay attention to so small a being as you or me. He is 
always accessible. He never fails us. We find the Lord every- 
where. Surely this is most wonderful. A church or temple built 
to His honour and glory is God's house on earth. Solomon was 
content that he had succeeded in building a most beautiful place 
of worship. At the same time he was wise enough to know that 
the most beautiful place on earth built by man's hand can never 
be good enough for God, or worthy of His majesty and might. 

Solomon exclaims (i Kings viii. 27) : 'But will God indeed 
dwell on the earth? Behold the heaven and heaven of heavens 
cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded.' 
Solomon asked the Lord's blessing, and he asked him to make 
him and his Israelites worthy of the great favour that they were 
all receiving at God's hands, i Kings viii. 29: 'That thine eyes 



128 ' ALL HAIL ' 

may be opened toward this house night and day, even toward the 
place of which Thou hast said, My name shall be there.' 

Let us fall down as the knight in our picture is doing, and let 
us also pray to our Heavenly Father. Solomon, the great king, 
was on his knees before the Mighty King of Heaven, praying with 
all his heart. He rose to his feet and blessed the people, and he 
and the children of the covenant offered up a sacrifice to God Al- 
mighty. 

And God appeared to Solomon a second time at Gibeon, and 
He told him that his prayer was heard. Solomon, on the whole, 
had reigned well so far, although there were already signs of the 
falling away which followed. He built a navy for the Israelites, 
and he sent his ships trading on the Red Sea and the Mediterra- 
nean, and they came back laden with gold from Ophir, which was 
probably in East Africa, gold which may have been brought from 
the ancient workings of surface mines which exist to-day in Rho- 
desia. Solomon built many cities, amongst others Gezer and Beth- 
horon, and Baalath and Tadmor in the wilderness. This latter 
place, we believe, is the Baalbec of to-day, near Damascus. 

There lived in those days a woman of great renown, the Queen 
of Sheba, an ancient kingdom in South Arabia, She had heard 
of the fame of Solomon, The Bible says she wished to prove him 
with hard questions. She wished to see for herself if the report 
of his wisdom, his goodness, and his wealth were true. She wanted 
to make his acquaintance, so she journeyed to Jerusalem with a 
great train; with camels laden with spices, and much gold and 
precious stones, all of which she presented to King Solomon. 
When she saw the house he had built, 'and the meat of his table, 
and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, 
and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he 
went up unto the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in 
her. And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard 
in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I be- 
lieved not the words until I came, and mine eyes had seen it : 
and behold, the half was not told me ... . Happy are thy 
men, happy are these thy servants which stand continually before 
thee, and that hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God 
which delighteth in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel : be- 
cause the Lord loved Israel for ever, therefore made he thee king 
to do judgment and justice' (i Kings x. verses 5-9). 

For a picture representing Solomon and the Queen of Sheba we 
must turn to another panel of that glorious bronze door by Ghi- 
berti, of which a reproduction appears opposite. We see her there 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 129 

clasping Solomon's hand as a mark of friendship and esteem. We 
have already been told (i Kings x. verse 2) that 'she communed with 
him of all that, was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her 
questions : there was not anything hid from the king which he told 
her not.' We see this king and queen holding converse together : 
behind them stands the throne of ivory, overlaid with the finest 
gold. The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round 
behind, and two lions stood on either side, and twelve lions stood 
there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps. 

King Solomon was endowed with some of the literary talent of 
King David, his father. King David's special book in the Bible 
is called the Book of Psalms ; King Solomon's two books, the Book 
of Proverbs and the Song of Songs. In the case of both royal 
poets, it is not intended to assert that they are authors of the 
whole books. The books are merely associated with their names, 
as reputed authors of portions of them. King David's authorship 
of a portion of the Psalms is, of course, far more probable than 
King Solomon's of the books connected with his name. 

You of my readers who are children must learn in childhood to 
concentrate your minds on your Bibles, and you must sit down 
when you can far away from where there are people talking, and 
you must read the Psalms and the Proverbs. You will soon find 
out those parts which you like best. Then on a Sunday, when you 
go to church, you must pay particular attention, and listen well, 
and you are sure to come across your favourite passages. Then you 
can join in the service with a will, and time will fly. 

Now we have thus far learned something about the three first 
kings of Israel, about Saul, and the two greater kings who fol- 
lowed, David and Solomon. We must look them all up in our 
Bible and read about them there, because there is so much we 
have not time to examine into together here. 

In this chapter we have heard much about King Solomon's 
riches. In our own lives, too, money is often discussed. People 
say how agreeable it is to have much of it. Many there are who 
live to a great extent just to get money. If we devote a few 
minutes to the subject, there may be some readers inclined to think 
that this is a digression from our Bible reading, but I hope that 
we shall be convinced before long that our every-day life is the 
very field for the practical work of the Bible. It is of no use 
whatever our reading the Bible as though it were merely interest- 
ing and not an authoritative guide to life. 

The Bible has been given to us, that each of us, separately and 
individually, may learn our own lesson for our daily good: and 



130 'ALL HAIL' 

there is not a single person who can afford to dispense with the 
guidance for every-day life, which can be obtained from the study 
of Holy Scripture. The Bible is a book of gradual discovery, and 
of gradual revelation. It is meant for us all, whatever our capaci- 
ties and whatever our position in life. We, all of us together, are 
God's large family of children, old and young, rich and poor, 
healthy and sick, happy and miserable, all of us in this big world 
of ours are meant to go and read our Bible daily, and drink living 
waters from God's own source. We shall never be disappointed 
if we make this our practice. In this Book of books, we find things 
revealed, as if written just for you and just for me. All is true, 
all is real, and there is something for every case. 

Let us look for a moment at the difference that we see when 
we compare other books with our Bible. There are some books 
that tell us about plants, some about animals, some about curing 
the sick; there are others that teach us most useful knowledge, 
how best to understand and employ our native language ; others 
about kings and queens and lawgivers. There are books that tell 
us about distant lands and foreign peoples. Why we could go on 
for ever, summing up the many, many books which have been 
written; all very useful and edifying no doubt, in their different 
ways. But see how great are their limitations, how little they can 
tell of the way of life. Many books there are,, alas ! not worth the 
trouble, or the time, which the poor housemaid has to spend in 
dusting them'. Many books become old-fashioned and out of date, 
and are of no use. New discoveries make them valueless. 

Now let us turn to our Bible. This Book remains of value 
through all ages, it is always new in spite of its antiquity. It is 
always of use, of the very greatest possible use : indeed, we can 
never afford to be, or to go, anywhere, without our Bible. If we 
travel, let our first thought be like General Gordon's, to pack up 
our Bible in our bag. Having once known the companionship and 
the comfort. of our Bible, of God's own inspired and precious Book, 
v.e can never dream of facing life without it. 

I want here to tell you about a Welsh girl. She had been 
taught out of God's Book, but she was too poor to possess a Bible 
of her own, and, in order to hear it read to her, she had to walk 
many miles across her native hills. One winter the snow was so 
deep and the weather so severe, that this dear child could not 
face the snowdrifts : she had to remain at home, and stay away 
and go without her Bible. A kind creature heard of her disap- 
pointment and helped her. All this happened years ago. Bibles 
were much more expensive than they are now, and this child's 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 131 

yearning for the Word of God was the means of drawing grown-iip 
people's attention to the need of reducing the Bible in price. 

Out of this came the formation of the Bible Society. We see 
hereby how God puts power into the hands of a simple young girl. 
It is not by any means always the grown-up people who are of 
the most importance in this life, or who alone bring about things 
for good. Now, are you not quite pleased to know this? Old 
people may be sometimes taught a great deal by a little child. 
Do you think that this is very strange? 

General Gordon loved children, especially boys, and spent much 
of his time amongst them. He and his boj^s, whom he had res- 
cued from the life of the streets, influenced one another for good. 
He was at once a father and an elder brother to them. They 
adored him. He taught them all about the Bible ; and they must 
have had lovely talks together. When he was in the greatest 
peril, left alone among savage people who knew no better, it was 
tc the Bible that he turned for guidance, comfort, and support. 
Brave soldier that he was, it was from the Bible he got his strength. 
Let us follow his example. 

All through life's journey we need our Bible ; alike when we are 
successful or unfortunate, and when inward storms assail us. Do 
let us begin while we are quite young to appreciate our Bible read- 
ing. What in your father's house, in the days of your childhood, 
may be but a habit to start with, is sure to become, as years roll 
on, second nature, a necessity of your life. You will be guided 
aright, through manhood and through womanhood. His 'li'ttle 
ones' were and are loved by the Lord Jesus. Let God through 
His Only Son speak to you tenderly, and you will be comforted. 

We said just now that we would speak about wealth and find out 
what that was. Well, it is a very agreeable thing to have money, 
and a good thing, provided that we use it aright. God gives to 
some people wealth, to others poverty. A golden rule for a rich 
person is that he should not be selfish. A rich person is never in- 
tended to spend his money wholly on himself. He has to realise 
how gracious the Lord has been to him to let him be rich. It is 
expected from such a person that he will do his duty, that he will 
think of those people around him who are without money. A rich 
man or child has to say, 'I must give money to poor children so 
that they may not starve,' as it was in the time of the famine which 
we read about in former chapters. We are not to spend all the 
n?oney which we happen to possess in any one year. While good 
fat years of plenty are upon us, we must save up and have some 
to spare, as Joseph had in Egypt in the days of old. 



132 ' ALL HAIL ' 

Above all, no opportunity must be lost of dwelling on the ex- 
ample of the Lord Jesus, who taught us in so wonderful a way the 
the lesson of humility, and of a simple life. Does not the Saviour 
say of Himself: 'Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head' (Mat- 
thew viii. verse 20). If we looked to Him before we set about 
ordering our lives, how much better it would be. His life, the 
highest life ever lived, was lived in perfect independence of ex- 
ternal conditions, without property and without luxury — two things 
which most men spend their lives to gain, as well as without as- 
ceticism. We must share our money with those who need it, as 
we have opportunity. 

The First Book of Kings, like all the books of the Bible, is a 
truthful book. Though written by Israelites, it tells the truth 
about the draw^backs to the prosperity of the Israelites, and to the 
greatness of King Solomon. It tells us that, in spite of all his 
blessings and privileges, he became an idolater : 'For Solomon 
went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Mil- 
coni the abomination of the Ammonites' (i Kings xi. verse 5) ; 
and 'then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abom- 
ination of Moab, in the hill, that is before Jerusalem, and for Mo- 
lech, the abomination of the children of Ammon' (i Kings xi. 
verse 7). This was the result of the king's polygamy. He mar- 
ried many wives of different nations, and to please his wives he 
joined in the immoral worship of their evil gods, such as those 
that have just been enumerated. 

Thus Solomon unconsciously made provision for the decay of 
his kingdom when he introduced and patronised the idolatries of 
neighbouring nations, and so undermined the nation's strongest bul- 
wark, the faith in the God of Abraham, the old loyal faith in pure 
spiritual religion, which, as the word 'religion' signifies, is the 
power that binds together or unites a nation, just as irreligion 
means the unbinding and disuniting power that makes a nation 
fall asunder. Solomon's reign ends with an ominous forecast of 
the approaching breaking up of his kingdom. Solomon reigned 
over Israel forty years, i Kings xi. v£rse 43 : 'And Solomon slept 
with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father : 
and Rehoboam' his son reigned in his stead.' 

Rehoboam went to Shechem, and there all Israel made him 
king. Jeroboam and all the congregation came to Rehoboam, and 
told him that his father had made their yoke grievous, and asked 
him to lighten their yoke. He asked for three days to think it 
over, and consulted tirst the old men who had stood before Solo- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 133 

mon, and they advised him to speak good words to the malcon- 
tents, and that then they would be his servants for ever. But he 
forsook the counsel of the old men, and consulted with the young 
men instead. By the young men's advice he declared that, whereas 
his father had made their yoke heavy, he would add to it. His 
father had chastised them with whips, but he would chastise them 
with scorpions. The ten tribes were thoroughly discontented, and 
said : 'To your tents, O Israel : now see to thine own house, David' 
(i Kings xii. verse 16). Judah and Benjamin alone remained 
faithful to Rehoboam. 

Thus Solomon's empire broke up. The Lord forbade civil war 
between the two parties. Rehoboam' had prepared a great army 
to conquer the ten tribes and regain his kingdom, but, warned by 
the word of Shemaiah, the man of God, he gave up his enter- 
prise. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, was made the first king of 
Israel, i.e., of the northern, kingdom ; he had been given the ten 
tribes by God by the mouth of His prophet Ahijah the Shilonite, 
But he did not remain loyal to God. He did not shape his life 
according to the commandments or the will of Jehovah, the Lord 
of Israel. He trusted in himself. For reasons of policy he intro- 
duced calf-worship, setting up one golden calf in Bethel and one in 
Dan. His reasons were that he feared that if the people went up 
to the temple at Jerusalem, they would fall under the influence of 
Rehoboam. Also he made a house of high places, and he made 
priests of the lowest of the people. He set up an altar and or- 
dained a feast as at Jerusalem. When he was burning incense on 
his altar at Bethel, a man of God came and prophesied the com- 
ing of a great religious reformation in the future. As a sign, 
Jeroboam's hand, which he stretched from the altar to seize the man 
of God, was withered in a moment. 

Rehoboam died and was buried with his father, Solomon, and 
his grandfather, David, in the city of David. We need not give 
the names of the less important kings who succeeded Jeroboam 
in Israel or Rehoboam in Judah. We may begin again with the 
really important King Omri, captain of the host, who was chosen 
King of Israel by the army in the camp. Omri made Israel a 
great military power, after he had overthrown the usurper Zimri, 
He formed a close alliance with Tyre and Sidon, and his son 
Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Si- 
donians. Though a conqueror of the neighbouring nations and 
a power in Palestine, 'Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, 
and did worse than all that were before him' (i Kings xvi. verse 25). 
He removed the capital to Samaria, ruins of which town exist to 



134 ' ALL HAIL ' 

the present day. His son Ahab, who succeeded him, was even 
worse than his father, owing to the influence of his masterful wife 
Jezebel, who brought about the introduction of Baal-worship — the 
worship in which she had been brought up — into Israel. 

Ahab's reign was remarkable for the career of one of the great- 
est of prophets, Elijah, a man of Gilead. Elijah appears on the 
scene as from the first a bold opponent of Ahab and Jezebel, re- 
lying on his position as the instrument of God. The note of au- 
thority rings out in his utterance at his first recorded interview 
with Ahab. 'As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I 
stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according 
to my word' (i Kings xvii. verse i). The Lord saw fit in this 
way to punish the land, in consequence of the spread of idolatry. 
It required uncommon courage on the part of a man to speak 
out fearlessly to so wicked and absolute a king. It was not van- 
ity nor was it arrogance which made Elijah speak thus. In his 
trust in God, that trust which only comes from long experience, is 
to be found the reason for Elijah's courage and strength. 

And now we will give the first stories of God's wonderful work- 
ings for Elijah, i Kings xvii. verse 2: 'And the word of the 
Lord came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee east- 
w-ard, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jor- 
dan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook ; and I 
have commanded the ravens to feed thee there .... And the 
ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and evening. 
. . . And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up 
because there had been no rain in the land. And the word of the 
Lord came to him, saying. Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which be- 
longeth to Zidon, and dwell there : behold, I have commanded a 
widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to 
Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, 
the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to 
her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel that 
1 may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, 
and said. Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thy hand. 
And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but 
an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse : and, be- 
hold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me 
and my son that we may eat it, and die. And Elijah said unto 
her, Fear not : go and do as thou hast said : but make me thereof 
a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee 
and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The bar- 
rel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 135 

that day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went 
and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and 

her house did eat many days And it came to pass 

after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the 
house, fell sick ; and his sickness was so sore that there was no 
breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, Wihat have I done 
with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call 
my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? And he said unto 
her. Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and 
carried him up into a loft where he abode, and laid him upon his 
own bed. And he cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, 
hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, 
by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three 
times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray 
thee, let this child's soul come into him again. And the Lord 
heard the voice of Elijah: and the soul of the child came unto 
him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought 
him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him 
unto his mother: and Elijah said. See, thy son liveth. And the 
woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man 
of God, and the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.' 

There are certain things which we must admit to be what is 
called supernatural. This means somehow beyond our ordinary 
human experience, things that we, while here on earth, cannot 
give the reason for, because our minds cannot fully comprehend 
God's workings. God is infinite, whereas our minds are finite. 
I-et us remember the creation of the world by God is the great 
foundation miracle, and this, we have already pointed out, is the 
fact which stares us in the face, the explanation of which the 
wisest men can only guess at, a fact which prepares us to find the 
world full of miracle. 

Some quite familiar things, such as how our souls exist in our 
bodies, we cannot even attempt to explain. Let us realise that 
God has given us our life, itself a great mystery, whether in the 
animal or in the vegetable world. Not to speak of that' mystery 
of mysteries, the life of the Spirit, the life of the body itself is a 
wonderful thing. A flower is a mystery, says the poet : 

'Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is.' 

How can we ever doubt God's power or say that anything is im- 



136 'ALL HAIL' 

possible to God? Doubt is a very severe illness, which unfortu- 
nately attacks many people, to their own loss and misery. There is 
only one cure, and this precious medicine is called Faith. Oh, that 
those who are thus stricken would only reach out their hands to 
receive a balm for their wounds, and a cheer for their souls. 
Without faith they must spiritually starve to death. 

Realising therefore, as we do, that God is All-powerful, it is 
not surprising to us to see how His Spirit worked in Elijah, and 
how God used the prophet to bring back to life the widow's son. 
To us it is all quite plain. Elijah was a deeply religious man. He 
knew it was God's doing. He did not take any credit to himself. 

Elijah some time after was directed to go and again interview 
the wicked king Ahab. The prophet told the king that the Lord 
would send rain upon the earth: for the long drought had caused 
a sore famine in Samaria. When the prophet approached the king, 
the latter said unto him: 'Art thou he that troubleth Israel?' (i 
Kings xviii. verse 17). We see that Ahab wanted to blame the 
prophet for the drought in the country. Elijah answered Ahab, 
I Kings xviii. verse 18 : T have not troubled Israel ; but thou, 
and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the command- 
ments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now there- 
fore send, and gather to me all Israel, unto mount Carmel, and 
the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of 
the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab 

sent .... and gathered the prophets together 

And Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye 
between two opinions ? If the Lord be God, follow Him : but if 
Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. 
Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet 
of the Lord ; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.' 

Elijah now directs the prophets of Baal to take a bullock and 
prepare it for sacrifice, and make ready. He says that he also will 
prepare another bullock himself. He tells the prophets of Baal to 
call on their gods: Elijah would call on his God, and 'the God that 
answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered 
and said. It is well spoken' (i Kings xviii. verse 24). Verse 26: 
They (the prophets of Baal) 'called on the name of Baal from 
morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was 
no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon (about, 
R.V.) the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, 
that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud, for he is a god; 
either he is talking, or he is pursuing (gone aside, R.V.), or he is 
in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 137 

And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with 
knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it 
came to pass when midday was past, and they prophesied until the 
time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither 
voice nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. And Elijah said 
unto all the people, Come near unto me And he re- 
paired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah 
took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the 
sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Is- 
rael shall be thy name: and with the stones he built an altar in 
the name of the Lord : and he made a trench about the altar, as 
great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put wood 
in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, 
and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt 
sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. 
And they did it the second time. And he said. Do it the third 
time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round 
about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water. And it 
came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, 
that Elijah the prophet came near, and said. Lord God of Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art 
God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all 
these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this 
people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast 
turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and 
consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and 
the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And 
when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces : and they said, 
The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.' 

After this miracle Elijah directed the children of Israel to take 
the prophets of Baal, and not let one escape. They took them and 
brought them to Elijah, and he slew them down by the brook 
Kishon. An awful punishment was this to inflict! We feel, from 
our modern standpoint, much inclined to find fault with Elijah for 
such bloodshed; but it is not for us to pronounce judgment. The 
Bible is a book for our instruction. This passage must not be 
regarded as a mere brutality. Everything that happens in Holy 
Scripture has, if we seek for it, some explanation. The key to 
the Old Testament is to realise that Revelation is progressive. 
Men in those days were able to understand far less of the Will of 
God than men at a later period. 

We must also remember in this connection that Baal-worship spelt 
national immorality, and national immorality by God's inexorable 



138 ' ALL HAIL ' 

law spells national destruction. It was to save the whole nation 
from falling- to pieces that Elijah slew the four hundred and fifty 
prophets of Baal. If we would put to death the man or men who 
poisoned our water supply deliberately, or even the man who killed 
an individual, there was some reason for Elijah to think that it was 
God's Will that he should slay the slayers of the souls of a whole 
nation. Contrast the severity of Elijah with the growing sweet- 
ness of Elisha, and especially with the anticipation of the rule of 
Christian love in Isaiah, 

I Kings xviii. verse 41 : 'And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, 

eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain 

Elijah went up to the top of Carmel ; and he cast himself down upon 
the earth, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant, 
Get up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and 
said. There is nothing. And he said. Go again seven times. And 
it came to pass at the seventh time that he said, Behold, there 
ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand. And he 
said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee 
down that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in the mean 
while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there 
was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel. And the 
hand of the Lord was upon Elijah; and he girded up his loins, and 
ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.' 

Ahab told his wicked wife Jezebel all that had happened, and how 
the false prophets had been slain. She resented the slaughter of 
her four hundred and fifty prophets, and hated Elijah. She sent 
him a message that she would have him killed the next day. 

I Kings xix. verse 3 : 'And when he saw that, he arose, and went 
for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongeth to Judah, and 
left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the 
wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he 
requested for himself that he might die ; and said, It is enough ; 
now, O Lord, take away my life ; for I am not better than my 
fathers.' 

We see Elijah, sad and forlorn, hunted for his life and completely 
wearied out, allowing himself to think that the Lord who can 
achieve everything was unmindful of His prophet, and was pre- 
paring for him nothing but failure. He thought there was little 
use in trying any more or in working so hard. We see here the 
weariness of even one of God's own chosen ones. It is for us to 
learn our lesson from this before passing on. We are meant never 
to despair, or to give in. It is for us to plod on, even when things 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 139 

are darkest : we are meant to work patiently. God is on high to 
reward, but not until His own good time has come. 

We now go back again to Elijah, i Kings xix. verse 5, con- 
tinues : 'And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an 
angel touched him' and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he 
looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse 
of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down 
again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, 
and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey 
is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and 
went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto 
Horeb the mount of God. And he came thither unto a cave, and 
lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and 
said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah? And he said, I have 
been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of 
Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and 
slain thy prophets with the sword : and I, even I only, am left ; and 
they seek my life, to take it away. And he said. Go forth, and 
stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord 
passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and 
brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not 
in the wind : and after the wind an earthquake ; but the Lord was 
not in the earthquake : and after the earthquake a fire ; but the 
Lord was not in the fire : and after the fire a still small voice. And 
it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his 
mantle, and went out, and stood at the entering in of the cave. 
And behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest 
thou here, Elijah?' 

Elijah had passed through his tribulation of weariness and doubt 
and of unfaith in the success of his appointed work. Oh! the 
comfort and joy of Elijah in the midst of his disappointment, and 
amid all the tumult of the forces of nature, as well as the tumult 
of his own heart, when he heard this still small voice which put 
him once more in communion with his God. Oh ! the peace that 
came to him once more, Elijah knew again that this still small 
voice meant that the Lord was present with him. 

This still small voice that had spoken not to the outward ear, 
but to the spirit's hearing in the depths of the soul, was the same 
voice that had spoken to Abraham and called him to leave his home 
beyond the Euphrates to found the nation of which Elijah was 
now the chief prophet. It was the same voice that had spoken to 
Moses on the same mountain, long centuries before, and had 



140 ' ALL HAIL ' 

called him to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, and after- 
wards had given him again in the same mount the Ten Com- 
mandments. It is the same still small voice that has spoken to all 
men and women sinec, and guided safely all who listened to and 
obeyed it. It is the same still small voice that speaks to you and 
me now. The voice that spoke to Moses was the reason why 
Horeb was called the Mount of God, and probably the reason why 
Elijah went there in his hour of utmost need; and for the same 
reason, because the same voice speaks to us specially there, we call 
the church the House of God. 

Well would it be if all of us would appreciate to the full God's 
gentleness, and God's tenderness, and God's goodness towards us. 
A still small voice it is, yet it is able to influence us wonderfully. 
This passage of the Bible is full of beauty, full of meaning; and let 
us never forget that it is a small hushed voice which can soothe, 
and comfort, and refresh all those who suffer in mind or in body. 
The fulness of God's time had come. Elijah had had two kinds of 
food. The angel had brought him food for his body, and God had 
supplied him with food for his soul. All of us live on both these 
kinds of food, in the same way as Elijah. Our inner self is far 
hungrier and needier than our outward. To sustain its life the 
body is satisfied with some milk, some bread, and some fruit. The 
plainer the food is with which we supply our body the better remains 
our health, and the better able are we to cope with all the demands 
made upon us. And now let me tell you of all the things our inner 
man has need of. He hungers after righteousness ; he thirsts for 
living waters; he requires faith, pure thoughts, good actions; he 
hungers after truth, courage, patience, unselfishness ; he thirsts for 
kindness of heart, charity — well, we have not half-finished summing 
up all his necessities yet ; but we must return to our narrative, and 
so must pass on. 

We have seen how God's prophet Elijah was allowed to suffer 
humiliation and bitterest disappointment, and utter failure, as it 
seemed to him, before his work for Israel's benefit was turned to 
good account. From Elijah we learn that it matters not whether 
our labour be seemingly in vain, or whether it be crowned with 
success which we can see. It is God's eye alone which sees every- 
thing. He knows if our work counts, and we are to be content to 
leave the issue in His hands. It is waste of time for us to trouble 
our heads as to results : it is our duty to be up and doing. God is 
on high to complete and to make perfect, if it be His Will. Elijah 
had worked as much as God had intended him to work. He had 
believed in and done his best for the Lord. Another man chosen 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 141 

by God was already waiting to take up the task of reforming the 
life of the children of Israel. We still continue reading their 
history. They are still being taught, and great is the time and the 
patience their training continues to require, just like the patience of 
Him who is trying to teach us. 

I Kings xix. verse 15: 'And the Lord said unto him' (Elijah), Go, 
return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou 
comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria : and Jehu the son of 
Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel : and Elisha the son 
of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy 
room.' 

The Lord told Elijah that the Israelites would suffer severely at 
the hands of these men; for instance such as escaped from the 
sword of Hazael should be slain by that of Jehu. The Lord went 
on to say that there were left to Him still seven thousand in Israel 
who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and whose mouth had not 
kissed him. Elijah departed according to God's word, and found 
Elisha, the son of Shaphat, ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen 
before him, and he with the twelfth. Elijah passed him and cast his 
mantle upon him. Thus the old prophet called the young prophet, 
who rose to take his place. Elijah had another meeting with Ahab, 
and predicted the king's doom, because Ahab had worked evil in 
the sight of the Lord. He also foretold Jezebel's doom. The oc- 
casion for this prophecy of doom was supplied in the following way : 
Naboth, the Jezreelite, had a vineyard, hard by the palace of Ahab, 
and Ahab wanted to possess it. Naboth replied that he did not 
wish to part with the inheritance of his father. Jezebel heard this, 
and she said to King Ahab her husband, 'Dost thou not govern 
the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be 
merry : I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite' 
(i Kings xxi. verse 7). 

So she plotted and brought to pass the stoning of Naboth, and 
told her husband to go down and take possession : and Ahab went. 
Who should meet him but Elijah, sent to meet him by the command 
of God. Ahab greeted Elijah thus: 'Hast thou found me, O mine 
enemy?' (i Kings xxi. verse 20), Elijah replied: 'I have found 
thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of 
the Lord. Behold, I will bring evil upon thee .... and 
w^ill make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat 
. . . . for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me 
to anger, and made Israel to sin' (i Kings xxi. verse 22). And of 
Jezebel also he said : 'The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the walls of 
Jezreel. Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; 



142 'ALL HAIL' 

and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat' (i Kings 
xxi. verses 23, 24). 

King Ahab of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah joined 
forces against the Syrians, but Ahab's hour had come. In the battle, 
although Jehoshaphat had stood by him and Ahab had disguised 
himself in order to escape the enemies' attention, the latter king 
had to die. i Kings xxii. verse 34: 'And a certain man drew a 
bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints 
of the harness : wherefore he said to the driver of his chariot, 
Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am wounded. 
And the battle increased that day : and the king was stayed up in 
his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even : the blood ran 

out of the wound into the midst of the chariot So the 

king died, and was brought to Samaria, and they buried the king 
in Samaria. And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; 
and the dogs licked up his blood; and they washed his armour; 
according unto the word of the Lord which he spake/ 



CHAPTER X. 
II. Kings — I. and II. Chronicles — Ezra — Nehemiah — Esther. 

In the Second Book of Kings we continue to read of the evil 
doings of Israel. They trusted in Baal and forgot their own true 
God. The more we read the Bible the more we are convinced of 
the long-suffering patience of our Heavenly Father. 

We read in this book of these two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, 
going from Gilgal down to Bethel, then on to Jericho and down to 
the Jordan. 2 Kings ii. verse 8: 'And Elijah took his mantle, and 
wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they divided hither 
and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground. And it 
came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto 
Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from 
thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy 
spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: 
nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be 
so unto thee ; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, 
as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a 
chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; 
and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, 
and he cried. My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the 
horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more : and he took hold of 
his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the 
mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by 
the bank of Jordan; and he took the mantle of Elijah . . . . 
and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? 
and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and 
thither : and Elisha went over.' 

This was taken by the people to indicate that Elisha too was in- 
spired with the spirit of God, and they believed in him. And now 
we will look at our picture. It has pleased many and many a 
person who has not had the privilege of looking at its original, 
the panel of a most beautiful door of the Sabine Church in Rome. 
The panel is carved in a beautiful rich dark wood, mellowed by age, 
and we marvel as we gaze on it at the love and the patience the 
artist was able to put into his work. It is crude and early work, and 

143 



144 'ALL HAIL' 

very quaint; but true artistic feeling pervades every line of it, and 
we love this dear old-fashioned carving. 

About this time the Israelites were at war with the Moabites. 
Mesha, their king, had revolted against Ahab. A great number of 
stones and other monuments with inscriptions have been discov- 
ered which fully confirm' the truth of the portions of the Bible 
which they illustrate. No other ancient book in the world has 
such a mass of independent corroboration. Such a remarkable 
confirmation we find in the Moabite Stone. It was erected in 850 
B.C. by Mesha, king of Moab, to commemorate his victories over 
Israel. It was broken up by the Arabs, and a portion was found 
in 1868 in the ruins of Dibon. If you ever go to Paris go to the 
Louvre, to the Jewish Court, and there you will see the Moabite 
Stone. The inscription differs from the Hebrew of the Old Testa- 
ment. It belongs to the primitive Hebrew writing in which prob- 
ably many of the earlier books of the Old Testament were origin- 
ally written. King Mesha tells us on the Moabite Stone that in the 
reign of Omri and his son Ahab, Israel oppressed and occupied 
Moab forty years. We read in the book before us • (2 Kings iii. 
verse 4), that Mesha, king of Moab, 'rendered unto the king of 
Israel a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams 
with the wool : but it came to pass when Ahab was dead, that the 
king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.' 

This king of Israel was Jehoram, son of Ahab, and he invited 
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to assist him in an invasion of Moab, 
The two kings obtained the assistance of the king of Edom, and 
the three of them went to consult Elisha, and, acting on the pro- 
phet's advice, they completely out-manceuvred and defeated the 
Moabites, and blockaded the king of Moab in Kir-haraseth, and 
there the king of Moab offered his eldest son as a burnt offering 
on the wall to induce Chemosh, his god, to help him. This was 
followed by the retreat of the Israelites, probably owing to the 
strong superstition fostered by the idolatry introduced by Ahab, 
which made the Israelites regard the sacrifice of the king's son as 
an appeal to Chemosh that was certain to win that god's support. 
However the fact may be explained, this retreat from Moab was 
followed by a series of victories won by King Mesha, and recorded 
on the Moabite Stone. 

Elisha performed many miracles. We read how he multiplied 
the poor widow's oil. Her husband had died, and she told the 
prophet that he knew her husband had been a true servant of the 
Lord. They were poor, and the creditor had come to take away 
her two sons to be bondmen. Naturally the poor widow was greatly 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 145 

distressed ; she said that all she possessed in her house was one pot 
of oil. Elisha told her to go and borrow vessels from' all her 
neighbours, and when she had obtained them she was to shut the 
door upon herself and her sons, and she was to fill all the vessels full 
from the one pot of oil. The miraculous supply of oil proved in- 
exhaustible. The man of God then told her to sell her oil and 
pay her debt, and with what remained she was to feed herself and 
her children. Elisha performed another miracle at a place called 
Shunem, where there was a great {i.e., a wealthy) woman. She 
remarked to her husband that she had observed a man passing to 
and fro. She said (2 Kings iv. 9) : 'Behold now, I perceive that 
this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let 
us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall {i.e., the front 
wall that supported the roof of the house) ; and let us set for him 
there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick : and it 
shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn in thither.' 

Elisha availed himself of this kind hospitality. One day, he said 
to his servant Gehazi, that he was to call this Shunammite, because 
he wanted to show himself grateful to her, and ask her if there 
was anything he could do for her. Gehazi told the prophet that she 
had no children, and that she would dearly like to have a son. 
Elisha called her and told her she should have her wish, and in 
due time a child was given to her. 

2 Kings iv. verse 18: 'And when the child was grown, it fell on 
a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said 
unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry 

him to his mother he sat on her knees till noon, and 

then died. And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man 
of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out.' 

In her agony she called her husband to send a young man with 
an ass, to go and fetch the man of God. An ass was saddled; she 
directed her servant to go forward and not to slack his riding: for 
to make sure she had decided to go herself. At mount Carmel, 
Elisha spied her from afar. When she came up, she caught the 
prophet by the feet. Gehazi came near to thrust her away. 'The 
man of God said. Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her.' 

She persuaded the prophet to come back with her. 2 Kings iv. 
verse 32: 'And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the 
child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and 
shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. And 
he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his 
mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: 
and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the 



146 'ALL HAIL' 

child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to 
and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the 
child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. And 
he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called 
her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy 
son. Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to 
the ground, and took up her son, and went out.' 

There is a very charming story connected with an event in Elisha's 
life. I know, my young readers, you will love to hear about it. It 
is once more a most powerful example of the influence a boy or 
girl may possess and use for good. You must by no means wait to 
be useful until you are grown up, you must always be on the alert. 
You cannot afford to be dilatory. There is work for you to do for 
God and for your fellow-man, which is marked out by God for you 
and for no one else to accomplish. Your place is ready waiting 
for you, ready to be taken, to do some work for God at once. Well, 
the little maid the Bible tells us about here is not even known to 
us by name, but nobody ever forgets her, once they have read about 
her ; and you and I will always think lovingly of her. 

Naaman was captain of the host of the king of Syria, and he 
took captive many Israelites, mten, and women, and children, 
amongst whom was our little maid. She must have been a very 
natty and useful little person, who could turn her hand to anything. 
Naaman was quick to observe this. She became his wife's maid- 
servant. He was very sick of leprosy. There was then, as there 
is now, no cure for this disease. His death was merely a matter of 
time. Our little maid declared that she knew and was certain of 
a remedy for this stricken master of hers. Now what had this 
clever little person thought of? 

Our little maid, a mere child, had grasped the tremendous truth, 
the biggest thing even an older person can ever think about ; that 
God is the ultimate source of all help, physical as well as spiritual. 
2 Kings V. verse 3: 'She said unto her mistress, Would God my lord 
were with the prophet that is in Samaria ! for he would recover him 
of his leprosy. One went in and told his lord, saying, thus and thus 
said the maid that is of the land of Israel.' 

As a little child this little maid had been taught about Jehovah, 
and had learnt to love and trust Him in everything. Absolute faith 
in Jehovah, the God of her fathers, was her remedy, and certainly 
it was the best in the world. Naaman accordingly went with his 
horses and his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. 
The prophet sent his messenger to the sick man, and Naaman was 
told to go and wash in Jordan seven times, and that then his flesh 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 147 

would come again to him and he should be clean. Naaman's pride 
revolted against the humbleness of the means the prophet had ap- 
pointed for his cure, but ultimately, persuaded by his servants, he 
went and dipped in Jordan and was healed of his leprosy. This 
cleansed his poor diseased body ; but this was not the only thing that 
occurred. We are certainly meant to keep our bodies clean, but 
still more our souls. An Italian proverb has it that a clean soul 
lives in a clean body. God wishes to cleanse everybody's soul 
with living waters. 

2 Kings V. verse 15 : Naaman said, .... 'Behold, now I 
know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel' What a 
wonderful piece of work was this, and done by a very young child. 
A little girl anxious to do good to those who had done her harm, 
who had carried her off from her home and made her a slave. She 
illumines a page of the Bible, and light goes forth from her to all 
those who read about her. 

We now read of Elisha's death. It was a time of continual war. 
The Lord, according to His promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, still helped the Israelites, in spite of their persistent and re- 
peated misdeeds. In this Second Book of Kings we read of King 
Jehoram's general, Jehu, being anointed king at Ramoth-Gilead by 
Elisha's messenger. This was what the Lord had commanded 
Elijah on mount Horeb. i Kings xix. verse 16: 'Jehu the son 
of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel.' This order 
Elijah handed down to Elisha, whom he had called to be prophet 
in his room, according to the word of the Lord. Elisha sent one of 
the 'Sons of the Prophets' to carry out the duty of anointing Jehu. 
Jehu had no idea of the young man's errand, and, when he was 
anointed, came down and told the other captains of the host, and 
'they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him 
on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is 
king' (2 Kings ix. verse 13). Jehu at once drove his chariot to 
Jezreel, and there was met by King Jehoram in the portion of 
Naboth the Jezreelite. Jehu killed the king. 

2 Kings ix. verse 24: 'And Jehu drew a bow with his full 
strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went 
out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. Then said Jehu 
to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in the portion of the 
field of Naboth the Jezreelite : for remember how that, when I and 
thou rode together after Ahab his father, the Lord laid this burden 
upon him ; surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the 
blood of his sons, saith the Lord; and I will requite thee in this 
plat, saith the Lord.' 



148 'ALL HAIL' 

Jehu, after killing Jehoram first, and then his friend King Aha- 
ziah, drove to Jezreel, and as he entered in at the gate, Jezebel, 
who had painted her face and tired her head, looked out at a win- 
dow and said (verse 31), 'Had Zimri peace who slew his master?' 
Jehu looked up, and told the servants of the palace if they were on 
his side to throw her down. 'So they threw her down: and some 
of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses : and he 
trode her under foot. And when he was come in, he did eat and 
drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for 
she is a king's daughter. And they went to bury her : but they 
found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of 
her hands' (2 Kings ix. verse 33). When they told Jehu, he re- 
membered the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah: 'in the portion 
of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel.' 

Jehu's vengeance on the family of the wicked Ahab did not cease 
here. He sent to the Elders of Samaria and ordered them, if they 
were on his side, to cut off the heads of the king's seventy sons, 
and the Elders did so, and sent the seventy heads in baskets to 
Jehu. Jehu excused this slaughter of Ahab's family and friends by 
the plea of his zeal for God's service, and he certainly put down 
Baal-worship by the effective measure of slaughtering the worship- 
pers. The image of Baal and the house of Baal were broken down. 
2 Kings X. verse 28 : 'Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.' 
But in other respects we read: 'Jehu departed not from the sins of 
Jeroboam : to wit, the golden calves which were in Beth-el and 
in Dan' (that -is to say, a corrupt worship of Jehovah under the 
form of a golden bull was carried on). 

When Queen Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel and Ahab, saw 
that her son, Ahaziah, was dead, she rose and destroyed all the seed 
royal. One child escaped her, Joash by name, who was hidden 
away for six years in the house of the Lord by Jehosheba, the 
daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah. Meanwhile the usurp- 
ing Queen Athaliah reigned. The boy Joash was crowned by 
Jehoiada, the priest ; and Athaliah, who came in at this moment 
crying 'Treason !' was slain after she had been removed from the 
Lord's house. 

Joash, under the guidance of Jehoiada, reigned well. The temple 
was repaired, though the high places were not taken away. Hard 
pressed by Hazael, king of Syria, Joash had to buy him off with the 
hallowed treasures of the House of the Lord. Meanwhile, in Israel, 
Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, began to reign, and was succeeded by 
his son Joash, and he, in his turn, by his son, Jeroboam the Second. 
Jeroboam the Second proved to be the most powerful monarch who 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 149 

had occupied the throne of the northern kingdom. He re-conqnered 
the neighbouring tribes and nations, and his empire did not fall far 
short of the wide extent of David's. In his long reign there was 
great material prosperity as well as great military success; but 
with the prosperity came luxury, and with the luxury injustice and 
oppression of the poor by the rich. These were the outward mani- 
festations of a deadly disease of godlessness, which devastated all 
grades of society. The nation was gradually breaking up in the 
decay of character which followed the decay of religion. This 
was the time when Amos prophesied at the great sanctuary at 
Bethel that the Lord would send 'not a famine of bread, nor a 
thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord' (Amos viii. 
verse 11). 

At Bethel Amos foretold the approaching captivity of the Israelites, 
and soon after this the king of Assyria captured Samaria and 
carried away ten tribes captive to Assyria, where they disappeared 
finally like raindrops in the sea. Hosea's prophecies were like those 
of Amos, directed against the prevalent godlessness and immorality 
in the northern kingdom. Unlike Elijah and Elisha, Amos and 
Hosea were prophets who committed their prophecies to writing. 
Meanwhile Judah had to struggle against two forces, one of which 
was Pekah, king of Israel, and the other Rezin, king of Damascus. 
These two kings invaded Judah in order to set up a puppet of theirs 
as king in Jerusalem in place of King Ahaz, probably to compel 
Ahaz to join their alliance against Assyria. Ahaz^ in spite of the 
efforts of Isaiah, who was an influential statesman as well as a great 
prophet, entered into an alliance with the king of Assyria, suplicat- 
ing him for his help against the allied kings Pekah and Rezin, and 
taking all the silver and gold he found in the House of the Lord 
and sending it as a present to the king of Assyria. 

'And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers 
in the city of David: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead' 
(2 Kings xvi. verse 20). This was more than seven hundred years 
before the birth of Christ. Hezekiah was a great and good king, 
and he 'did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according 
to all that David his father did.' Not the least of the many things 
to his credit is the close friendship which existed between him and 
the prophet Isaiah. He was twenty-five years old when he began 
to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. 2 Kings 
xviii. verse 4: 'He removed the high places, and brake the images, 
and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent 
that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel 
did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan' (i.e., 'brazen 



ISO 'ALL HAIL' 

serpent' or 'a mere piece of brass')- 'He trusted in the Lord God 
of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings 
of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, 
and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, 
which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; 
and he prospered whithersoever he went forth: and he rebelled 
against the king of Assyria, and served him not. He smote the 
Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the 
tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And .... Shal- 
maneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria, and besieged it.' 

Here it would be most interesting to read the entire chapters of 
2 Chronicles xxix., xxx., and xxxi. In these chapters is described 
the cleansing of the Temple of God; how Hezekiah brought in the 
priests and the Levites to carry on in the best possible manner the 
solemn services in the House of the Lord. The reign of Hezekiah 
was the golden age of prophetic vision : the age of the greatest of 
all the prophets, Isaiah of Jerusalem. A large part of Isaiah's 
activity as a statesman consisted in the influence he tried to exer- 
cise against the party at Jerusalem who were eager for an alliance 
with Egypt against the Assyrians. At one time Isaiah was quite 
successful ; but at last this Egyptian party among the nobility of 
Jerusalem overcame H'ezekiah's reluctance, and he broke off friendly 
relations with the Assyrians by refusing to pay tribute. Then King 
Sennacherib of Assyria marched into the Holy Land with a great 
army, and defeated the Egyptian forces who came to the aid of 
Hezekiah. 

One of Sennacherib's inscriptions says : 'As for Hezekiah of 
Judah, who has not submitted to my yoke, I besieged and took forty- 
six of his strong cities . . ' . . I took two hundred thousand 

and one hundred and fifty prisoners I shut up Hezekiah 

himself in his royal city, Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage.' Heze- 
kiah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, where he lay with his 
arm}^ and offered terms, and paid a huge tribute of gold and 
silver. Nevertheless, Sennacherib was not satisfied, but sent part of 
his army to Jerusalem under his officer. 2 Kings xviii. verse 17 : 
'And the king of Assyria sent Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rab- 
shakeh (titles of Assyrian officers) from Lachish to King Hezekiah, 
with a great host against Jerusalem .... and when they were 
come up, they .... stood by the conduit of the upper pool, 
which is in the highway of the fuller's field.' 

This identical place and pool here described (taking it as that 
of Siloam) is to be seen at the present day. The Rab-shakeh blas- 
phemed against the Lord, declaring scornfully the folly of trusting 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 151 

in the Lord's protection. 2 Kings xviii. verse 24: 'How then wilt 
thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's 
servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen ?' 
Then Hezekiah's representatives begged the Assyrian officer to speak 
in Syrian, and not to talk in the Jews' language (that is, in 
Hebrew), whereupon the Assyrian appealed directly to the people, 
who -had assembled on the walls and urged them to surrender, prom- 
ising them, on behalf of the king of Assyria, that if they came out 
and surrendered, he would take them away to a fertile land, where 
they would live in the utmost comfort and prosperity. This gross 
appeal to the common soldiers filled Hezekiah with dismay. He 
rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into 
the house of the Lord. He sent his servant Eliakim to the prophet 
Isaiah. He besought the Lord to have mercy on the children of 
Israel. He implored Isaiah to lift up his prayer 'for the remnant 
that are left.' Consolation was given to Hezekiah in a great pro- 
phecy from Isaiah. The king was comforted by the news that his 
mighty enemy. King Sennacherib, would go back to Assyria un- 
successful. 

The prophet Isaiah assured King Hezekiah that the Lord had 
graciously taken compassion on them all. 2 Kings xix. verse 32 : 
'Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He 
shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come 
before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that 
he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this 
city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city, to save it, for my 
own sake, and for my servant David's sake.' 

The Lord promised that 'the remnant that is escaped of the 
house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear 
fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and 
they that escape out of mount Zion : the zeal of the Lord of hosts 
shall do this' (verses 30, 31). 

2 Kings xix. verse 35 : 'And it came to pass that night, that the 
angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians 
an hundred fourscore and five thousand : and when they arose early 
in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.' After this the 
Assyrian army retreated from Jerusalem, and King Sennacherib him- 
self left Lachish and returned to Assyria, where he was afterwards 
assassinated by his own sons, in the house of Nisroch his god. As 
to the way the Lord smote the Assyrian camp at Jerusalem, some 
incline to think it was plague, but its suddenness seems to point 
rather to a visitation of cholera. 

We read now of a severe illness which assailed Hezekiah. The 



152 'ALL HAIL' 

king was 'sick unto death' (2 Kings xx. verse i). The prophet 
Isaiah advised him to put his house in order because he was going 
to die. The poor sick man turned his face to the wall, and prayed 
unto the Lord, and this is what he said (2 Kings xx. verse 3) : 'I 
beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee 
in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good 
in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.' He hoped that immediate 
relief would be given him. God's ways are not our ways. Hezekiah 
had first to be humbled and to be taught that God's blessing is not 
bestowed because we may happen to deserve it, as we are inclined 
to think. We are not to think that it is ours by right. No, 
indeed, God's blessing is upon us through grace. 

Hezekiah had to be taught that what he had been the means of 
accomplishing was by no means through his own merit, but thanks 
rather to the Lord's power for good, working in him. When hu- 
mility reigned in his soul, then, and not before, did the Lord deign 
to listen to his prayer, and grant the fulfilment of it. The word 
of the Lord came to the prophet Isaiah, and he was able to tell King 
Hezekiah that the Lord had seen his tears and heard his prayers, 
and would heal him, and would grant him a further lease of life of 
fifteen more years. In humbleness of heart, Hezekiah acknowledged 
his weakness. The Lord strengthened him and consoled him, and 
his recovery took place. A lump of figs, so the Bible tells us, was 
laid as a plaster on Hezekiah' s boil, and thereupon his body was 
quickly restored to health. In the days of Hezekiah's personal afflic- 
tion and recovery, Israel, that is Judah, regained some of its former 
prosperity. 

At the end of Hezekiah's reign we read (2 Chronicles xxxii. verse 
27) : He 'had exceeding much riches and honour: and he made 
himself treasuries for silver, and for gold, and for precious stones, 
and for spices, and for shields, and for all manner of pleasant jew- 
els ; storehouses also for the increase of corn, and wine, and oil ; 
and stalls for all manner of beasts, and cotes for flocks. Moreover 
he provided him cities, and possessions of flocks and herds in abun- 
dance : for God had given him substance very much. This same 
Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought 
it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Heze- 
kiah prospered in all his works.' 

Finally we read in 2 Chronicles xxxii. verse 33 : 'Hezekiah slept 
with his fathers, and they buried him in the chiefest of the sepul- 
chres of the sons of David : and all Judah and the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem did him honour at his death. And Manasseh his son 
reigned in his stead. Manasseh was twelve years old when he 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 153 

began to reign, and he reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem.' 
Unhappily, he 'did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.' 
'He built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had 
broken down, and he reared up altars for Baalim and made groves 

and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them 

Also he built altars in the house of the Lord' (2 Chronicles xxxiii. 
verse 2). And he made his children pass through the fire, and 
observed times and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar 
spirits and wizards, 'and wrought much evil in the sight of the 
Lord.' So 'Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him 
in his own house : and Amon his son reigned in his stead' (2 Chron- 
icles xxxiii. verse 20). Amon sinned like his father, had a short 
reign, and was killed by his own servants. Now we come to a boy- 
king, whose name was Josiah, Amon's son. He was only eight 
years old when he came to the throne. He reigned for thirty-one 
years. He walked in God's ways. Think of this good young king, 
and how blessed it is if the same can be said of us, namely, that 
we try to walk in God's ways. jWe belong to Him just the same. 
We can also be a lovely example to those around us, as was King 
Josiah to the men of Judah. 

Josiah, in the eighteenth year of his reign, repaired the Temple, 
appointing men who did the work faithfully. During the work Hil- 
kiah, the high priest, found the Book of the Law in the House of 
the Lord (621 B.C.)- This was carried to the king, and Shaphan, 
the scribe, read it to the king. The contents of this book point to 
its being the book of Deuteronomy. 

Josiah at once recognised that the commandments and ordinances 
in this book had not been kept, and he rent his clothes. Then he 
commanded Hilkiah, the high priest, to go and inquire of the Lord. 
He went and inquired through Huldah, the prophetess, the wife of 
Shallum; 'now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college' (R.V. in the 
second quarter) (2 Chronicles xxxiv. verse 22). She told them 
that the Lord would bring evil on Jerusalem for their wrong- 
doings, but because Josiah had humbled himself it should not come 
in his day. Josiah sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and 
Jerusalem and all the people small and great (2 Kings xxiii. verse 
2), 'and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the 
covenant which was found in the house of the Lord, and the king 
stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after 
the Lord, .... and to perform the words of this covenant 
that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the 
covenant. And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and 
the priests of the second order, .... to bring forth out of 



154 ' ALL HAIL ' 

the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and 
for the grove, and for all the host of heaven : and he burned them 
without Jerusalem'; and 'he brought out the grove from the house 
of the Lord, .... and burned it at the brook Kidron, and 
stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the 
graves of the children of the people.' 2 Kings xxiii. verse 15 : 
'Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which 
Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, 
both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the 
high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.' 

This putting down of the high places, reaching even to Bethel, 
which characterised Josiah's reformation, accords well with the 
fact that the reformation proceeded from the reading of the Book 
of the Law, which we have taken to be Deuteronomy, for this ex- 
clusive regard for a central sanctuary and objection to a local wor- 
ship as at the high places is a central feature of that book. 2 Kings 
xxiii. verse 29 tells us : 'In his' (Josiah's) 'days Pharaoh-necho, king 
of Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria to the river Eu- 
phrates : and king Josiah went against him ; and he slew him at 
Megiddo when he had seen him' (608 B.C.). 'And his servants car- 
ried him in a chariot dead from' Megiddo, and brought him to Jeru- 
salem, and buried him in his own sepulchre.' 2 Chronicles xxxv. 
verse 24: 'And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And 
Jeremiah' (a prophet we shall read about later) 'lamented for 
Josiah.' 

Josiah's sons and successors were mere empty semblances of kings, 
vassals of the ruling power in Jerusalem in their days, the power of 
Egypt. The first of these kings, Jehoahaz, was deposed by Pharaoh- 
necho, who made Eliakim king (who also was the son of Josiah), 
and turned his name to Jehoiakim. The last-named king 'gave 
the silver and gold to Pharaoh,' and levied for the purpose a regular 
land-tax, which supplied the sum that was paid to Pharaoh. 

On the Euphrates a great change had taken place. Nebuchadnez- 
zar, king of Babylon, overthrew Assyria, and by his victory over 
Egypt at Carchemish became the ruling power of the world. He 
reduced Judah to vassalage, and Jehoiakim became his servant for 
three years. But, encouraged by the Egyptian party at Jerusalem, 
the king rebelled against Babylon. Jeremiah, who was living at 
this time, exerted all his influence against the Egyptian party, and 
suffered severe persecution for his warnings of the destruction 
which was drawing near. 

The weakness of the kings and the wickedness of the people in- 
creased, in spite of Jeremiah's prophecies of the punishment that was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 155 

in store. Soon after Jehoiakim's death, Jehoiachin his successor 
being king, Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem'. Jehoia- 
chin his successor being king, Nebuchadnezzar came up against 
Jerusalem. Jehoiachin came out and surrendered. The king of 
Babylon took him away with the golden vessels of the Temple, and 
all the princes, and the mighty land, and brought them captive to 
Babylon. The king of Babylon made Mattaniah (another son of 
Josiah) king at Jerusalem, and changed his name to Zedekiah. 
Though he had bound himself by an oath of fealty to Babylon, 
this king rebelled against his sovereign lord. Jeremiah, who looked 
upon the power of Babylon as the Lord's great instrument of judg- 
ment, had for years steadily opposed all rebellion against the Chal- 
deans. When Nebuchadnezzar came up and beseiged Zedekiah, 
Jeremiah did his best to induce him to surrender, and increased 
his own unpopularity at Jerusalem as being no patriot. Zedekiah 
was almost persuaded, but the Egyptian party prevailed. They ar- 
rested Jeremiah, and he had to bear much at their hands, which 
we shall read of when we come to his book of prophecies. 

At last Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar. This time the 
city and the Temple were destroyed, a great number of the in- 
habitants slaughtered, and all but a few of the rest were carried 
away into captivity. Zedekiah suffered a terrible retribution for 
his broken oath. He was taken away to Riblah, for judgment be- 
fore the king of Babylon, and there they slew his two sons before 
his face, and then put out his eyes, and took him away to Babylon. 

The high estimate of the importance of keeping a promise which 
the Jews had reached at this time is shown in the condemnation 
of Zedekiah's breach of faith in revolting against the king of Baby- 
lon by Jeremiah, and afterwards by Ezekiel. Jerusalem had now 
been practically destroyed. But a few Jews who had been left to 
cultivate the ground under the government of Gedaliah, the patron 
of Jeremiah, dragged out a poor existence. Apparently the last 
remnant of the children of Israel was swallowed up by the huge 
heathen population of Babylon. There was no reason why the 
exiles of Judah should survive a captivity of the same kind as that 
which had caused the final disappearance of the Ten Tribes. But 
when all seems darkest to human eyes the Lord can still deliver 
those who trust Him, as the exiles in Babylon were in a few years' 
tim^e to learn. 

The next two books in the Bible are called the Books of Chron- 
icles. The two books were originally one. The English name 
stands fairly for the Hebrew, but the Greek title is 'Things passed 
over' — that is, a supplement. Large parts of Chronicles were clearly 



156 'ALL HAIL' 

borrowed from Genesis, Samuel, and particularly from the First 
and Second Books of Kings. Chronicles has not the historical 
vakie of Kings, and its authority is inferior. As we have already 
made an extensive use of Chronicles in this chapter, a further ex- 
amination of its contents has not been thought necessary. 

The account of the Temple services has its value as a part of the 
history of public worship, and the author's treatment of the events 
in the nation's history reveals a distinctive standpoint — the priestly 
point of view. 

The next two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, are closely connected 
with Chronicles, being practically a continuation, the end of Chron- 
icles being found repeated in the opening of Ezra, and certain other 
points of resemblance being common to all three. 

The Book of Ezra is the chief record of the history of the Jewish 
people from their first return from Babylon, under Zerubbabel, to 
the renewed movement of return, seventy-eight years later, under 
Ezra. 

Ezra i. verse i : 'Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, 
that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be ful- 
filled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that 
he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, .... 
saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven 
hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth ; and he hath charged 
me to build him an house at Jerusalem.' The proclamation went 
on to urge all Jews who were willing, to join the expedition to 
Jerusalem, and to help to build the House of the Lord there. The 
chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, with the priests and 
Levites, arose to go up to Jerusalem, and all who were about them 
helped them with gifts. Cyrus, the king, brought forth the vessels 
of the House of the Lord carried away by Nebuchadnezzar, and 
gave them back to Sheshbazzar, prince of Judah, as representative 
of the Jewish nation. In order to understand the sacrifices de- 
manded by the Return, we must remember that the Exiles in 
Babylon had by this time attained a position of comfort and security 
which they had to abandon, in order to build again the ruins of 
Jerusalem. 

The Book of Nehemiah was joined to the Book of Ezra in the 
Jewish Bible and treated as one work. Both were placed before 
Chronicles, which, as we have seen, formed with these books a con- 
nected whole. The Temple foundations were laid by Sheshbazzar, 
who headed the first return. Thus we see how God's marvellous 
scheme of redemption of Israel was successfully being carried on, 
in spite of all vicissitudes and all sinfulness. A delay of sixteen 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 157 

years took place, owing to adverse influences brought to bear upon 
the Persian king, and then there was a fresh step forward. A great 
movement of exiles took place under Zerubbabel, a descendant of 
King David. This migration from Babylon numbered over forty- 
two thousand. A great deal was expected from this migration, and 
first the complete rebuilding of the Temple. But this was long 
delayed. They went each to his own city and let the House of God 
lie waste, says Haggai. In the autumn they all gathered to Jeru- 
salem, and erected an altar, and offered burnt offerings to the 
Lord, 'but the foundation of the Temple of the Lord was not yet 
laid' (Ezra iii. verse 7). 

They were stirred to action at last by the prophets Haggai and 
Zechariah. Then they relaid or renewed the old foundations amid 
the sounds of cymbals and trumpets, praising the Lord after the 
ordinance of David. Many of the ancient men who had seen the 
first house, when they saw the foundations of this house, wept 
with a loud voice, and many shouted for joy. But a strong op- 
position arose. The neighbouring tribes, the Samaritans, asked to 
be allowed to join in the building; but Zerubbabel and the rest of 
the exiles refused. The Samaritans, in revenge, carried their op- 
position to the court of Persia, and so influenced a succession of 
Persian kings that the work was seriously hindered. But at last by 
the joint efforts of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the Temple 
was completed. This was in the reign of King Darius, who helped 
the exiles to complete their work. Thus the Temple was finished 
after six years of actual building. All the children of the captivity 
kept the dedication of the House of God with great joy. We are 
not surprised that they glorified in their Temple when we realise 
how much it meant to them. Their whole national existence centred 
in the Temple, which represented their illustrious past. The Temple 
was the outward and visible sign that God was with them, the God 
of their fathers. To see the Temple and its holy observances re- 
instated was to them identical with a new beginning of the true 
life. 

After the completion of the Temple, a long break of sixty years 
appears in our records. The records begin again in the seventh 
year of Artaxerxes (Ezra vii. verse 8). In that year, Ezra the 
scribe comes before us as a leader in the restoration of the new 
Israel. Ezra was a man of high priestly family, who went up to 
Jerusalem with a decree given thus, according to Ezra vii, verses 
12-28 : 'Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe 
of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace .... I make a 
decree that all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and 



158 'ALL HAIL'- 

Levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own freewill to go 
up to Jerusalem, go with thee. Forasmuch as thou are sent of the 
king, and of his seven counsellors, to inquire concerning Judah and 
Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand ; 
and to carry the silver and gold, which the king and his counsellors 
have freely offered unto the God of Israel, whose habitation is in 
Jerusalem.' The king's decree went on to give power to Ezra, to 
collect all the silver and gold he could, in the province of Babylon, 
The king made 'a. decree to all the treasurers which are beyond 
the river .... that whatsoever Ezra, the priest, .... 
shall require .... be done speedily, unto an hundred talents 
of silver, and unto an hundred measures of wheat, and to an hun- 
dred baths of wine,' and so on (Ezra vii. verse 21). This is a 
copy of part of the letter which King Artaxerxes gave to Ezra 
the priest, and is written in Aramaic, a language which occurs else- 
where in the Bible only in the Book of Daniel, and in a short 
passage of Jeremiah. 

Thirteen years after Ezra's arrival at Jerusalem, we read of the 
mission of Nehemiah, a high officer of the Persian court, and a 
devoted servant of God. He heard from certain men of Judah, 
that 'the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province 
are in great affliction and reproach : the wall of Jerusalem also is 
broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire' (Nehe- 
miah i. verse 3). Then Nehemiah tells us that he wept, and 
mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed to the God of heaven, 
and said (Nehemiah i. verse 5) : T beseech thee, O Lord God of 
heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and 
mercy for them that love him, and observe his commandments : let 
thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest 
hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day 
and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the 
sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee. 

. . . . We have dealt very corruptly against thee 

Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy 
servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad 
amongst the nations : but if ye turn unto me, and keep my com- 
mandments, and do them; though there were of you cast out unto 
the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, 
and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my 
name there. Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou 
hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand. O Lord, 
I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy 
servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 159 

name: and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant 
him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king's cup- 
bearer.' 

Nehemiah ii. verses 1-8 : 'And it came to pass in the month Nisan, 
in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before 
him: and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I 
had not been beforetime sad in his presence. Wherefore the king 
said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not 
sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very 
sore afraid, and said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why 
should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my 
fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are con- 
sumed with fire? Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou 
make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said 
jntG the king. If it please the king, and if thy servant have found 
favour in thy sight, that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto 
the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it. And the 
king said unto me, (the queen also sitting by him,) For how long 
shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return? So it pleased the 
king to send me ; and I set him a time. Moreover I said unto the 
king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors 
beyond the river, that they may convey me over tillv I come into 
Judah; and a letter unto Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that 
he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace 
which appertained to the house, and for the wall of the city, and 
for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, 
according to the good hand of my God upon me.' 

King Artaxerxes granted Nehemiah permission to journey to Je- 
rusalem, and to see what could be done to ameliorate the condi- 
tion of the Jews. He was made Tirshatha, or governor of Judah 
and Jerusalem, with the full powers of a high Persian official, and 
he accordingly arrived with an escort of Persian horsemen, which 
must have greatly impressed every one in Jerusalem. Nehemiah 
succeeded in obtaining the people's help, and began by endeavouring 
to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem and to repair the dif- 
ferent gates, and he did admirable work for his nation. 

Nehemiah numbered the people, and they came to forty-two thou- 
sand and seventy. The building of the walls was vigorously op- 
posed by the enemies of the Jews, headed by Sanballat. When they 
saw how quickly the work was progressing they invited Nehemiah 
down to a conference in the plain of Ono, but he refused, saying, 
I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down to you. The 
enemy tried by various means to frighten or coerce Nehemiah to 



i6o 'ALL HAIL' 

cease from the work, and his own friends urged him to take refuge 
in the House of God, the Temple, 'for they will come to slay thee' 
(Nehemiah vi. verse lo). Nehemiah's answer to his friends' request 
was worthy of his noble and courageous character. Nehemiah vi. 
verse ii: 'Should such a man as I flee? And who is there, being 
as I am, would go into the temple to save his life. I will not go 
in.' At last the wall was finished in fifty-two days, and the enemy 
and all the heathen were much cast down, 'for they perceived 
that this work was wrought of our God' (Nehemiah vi. i6). After 
the walls were repaired, Ezra helped Nehemiah to complete the 
restoration of the new Israel. 

Ezra had brought from Babylon the Book of the Law, probably 
the books which we know as the Pentateuch. And he and Nehe- 
miah gathered the people together to an open space before the 
gates of Jerusalem, and there, from a pulpit of wood in the open 
air, he read aloud the Book of the Law to the people. Ezra read 
from' dawn till noon, and went on reading for a week, and the 
Levites explained the laws to the people, i.e., translated into the 
popular dialect the Hebrew original. 

At a great day of humiliation beginning with a solemn fast, the 
people, under the leadership of Nehemiah, confessed their sins 
and failures, and made a public repentance, and entered into an 
oath and bound themselves by covenant to walk in God's law which 
w^as given by Moses, the servant of God. Nehemiah x. verse 30: 
'And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the 
land, nor take their daughters for our sons : and if the people of 
the land bring ware of any victuals on the Sabbath day to sell, that 
we would not buy it of them on the Sabbath, or on the Holy Day: 
and that we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every 
debt. Also we made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves yearly 
with the third part of a shekel for the service of the House of our 
God.' 

This brings before us Nehemiah's definite purpose, to form the 
new Israel by a return to the old kingship of God, which they had 
found to be so ill-replaced by the rule of an earthly king. The new 
Israel was to be intensely national. It was to be a Church — ^but a 
national Church. Hence the rigid rules for separation from the 
people of the land, the engagement to refrain from' mixed marriages, 
and from buying and selling on the Sabbath day. Hence also the 
provision for the offerings of money to maintain the Sanctuary and 
the services. This great purpose of Nehemiah and Ezra explains 
the absolute refusal of the Jewish exiles to allow the- people of the 
land to help them to build their Temple. The people of the land 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE i6i 

were the Samaritans, largely composed of alien colonists whom the 
Assj^ian kings had brought to Samaria and the country round 
about to supply the place of the ten tribes carried away captive to 
Assyria by Sargon. The local worship of these Samaritans was 
largely mixed with idolatry: not only through the relics of heathen 
worship brought with them from Assyria, but also by the remains 
of the calf-worship at Bethel, and other false worship which they 
found among the relics of the old population of the northern 
kingdom. To keep completely separate from all admixture with 
the people of the land was absolutely necessary, if the ideal of a 
new Israel was to be realised. 

Nehemiah, as we have seen, took all possible precautions to 
make this separation permanent. This idea of a rigidly separate 
people became intensified in process of time into a bitter prejudice 
on the part of the Jews against the Samaritans, which we find in 
full force in our Lord's time. Finally Nehemiah took steps to en- 
large the population of Jerusalem by a wise arrangement. Nehe- 
miah xi. verse i : 'And the rulers of the people dwelt at Jerusalem : 
the rest of the people also cast lots to bring one of ten to dwell in 
Jerusalem the holy city, and nine parts to dwell in other cities. 
And the people blessed all the men, that willingly offered themselves 
to dwell at Jerusalem.' 

Nehemiah returned to Babylon, and when he came back to Jerusa- 
lem found many of the abuses he had provided against still flourish- 
ing, and dealt with them with his accustomed vigour. Nehemiah 
xiii. verse 6: 'But in all this time was not I at Jerusalem: for in 
the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon came I 
unto the king, and after certain days obtained I leave of the 
king: and I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that 
Eliashib did for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber in the courts 
of the house of God. And it grieved me sore : therefore I cast 
forth all the household stuff of Tobiah Then I com- 
manded, and they cleansed the chambers : and thither brought I 
again the vessels of the house of God, with the meat offering and the 
frankincense. And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had 
not been given them: for the Levites and the singers, that did the 
work, were fled every one to his field. Then contended I with 
the rulers, and said. Why is the house of God forsaken?' 

He found also the Sabbath day broken even in Jerusalem. Nehe- 
miah xiii. verse 17: 'Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, 
and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane 
the Sabbath day?' Prompt in dealing with this, as with other 
abuses, he commanded that the gates should be shut and that they 



i62 ' ALL HAIL ' 

should not be opened till after the Sabbath. Thus the New Israel, 
the Jewish Church, started on its way, and with all its faults made 
real progress, if we compare its state with the state of Israel sunken 
in idolatry and immorality in the days before the Captivity. The 
New Israel was based on a written book: the Book of the Law, the 
Pentateuch, brought by Ezra from Babylon, where a great work 
had been carried out by the Exiles, who wrote probably for the 
first time the laws, which had previously been a tradition of the 
priests. The exiles in Babylon, repentant for national sin, conceived 
by the guidance of God's Spirit a national reformation. And by 
such writings of theirs as the Book of Ezekiel prepared the way 
and formed the ideal of the New Israel. 

Whereas the Old Israel depended on the living voice of the 
Prophets, the New Israel depended on the written law. That law, 
accepted as a standard of religion by the Jews of the Return under 
Ezra and Nehemiah, required to be explained. Hence, while main- 
taining the sanctuary at Jerusalem, it soon became necessary 
to have centres for the explanation of the law in other towns and 
villages. Thus arose the synagogues. Every village had its syna- 
gogue ; most towns had several. The synagogue system was in 
full possession in our Lord's time. He and His disciples entered 
into the synagogue, as we go to church. The synagogues' services, 
like ours, had set prayers, two lessons, and a sermon. Thus through 
the synagogues our churches date back to the days of Nehemiah. 
We have a system of national religion based, in a real sense, on 
theirs. Our religion, though chiefly the religion of a Divine Person, 
Our Lord, is also jthe religion of a written book, the Bible. Careful 
instruction in that book, as an authoritative standard of religion, is 
recognised as necessary to-day. All this we trace back to the 
reformation carried out by Nehemiah. 

Reading our Bible, we have noticed that most of the books have 
names of men. Only two in all the Bible are called after women, 
Ruth was one of them, and We remember how much we enjoyed 
reading about her. Now we come to the other book called by a 
woman's name, Esther. The name Esther signifies a star (Persian, 
'stara'). In the Hebrew language Esther's original name was H'a- 
dassah — 'i.e., myrtle. A curious feature of the Book of Esther is 
that the word God is not once mentioned. But, all the same, the 
book teaches us some valuable lessons. The Jews held this Book 
of Esther in great regard, for reasons that we shall presently see. 

Esther was a Jewish exile of a family of the tribe of Benjamin. 
She was an orphan, and was brought up by her cousin Mordecai 
(who adopted her as his daughter, both her parents being dead). 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 163 

He lived in Shushan, the palace, and was attached to the court of 
the Persian king, Ahasuerus. Ashasuerus reigned from India to 
Ethiopia, and he is believed to be the Xerxes whom boys will 
remember at once, as well known in Greek history, who ended his 
expedition against the Greeks by losing the battle of Salamis, 480 
B.C. On one occasion the nobles of Persia and Media were all as- 
sembled before him, and he was holding a great feast. King Ahas- 
uerus had a queen whose name was Vashti. The feast was a de- 
liberate occasion for heavy drinking. On the seventh day, when the 
king had taken too much wine, he sent for the queen to show her 
beauty to the people and the princes. This was a gross breach of 
Eastern manners, and an insult to the queen. The king had become 
coarse and senseless with drink, a degradation of the Divine likeness, 
which is a grievous sin. 

I do not know if you have ever seen in a country lane or else- 
where, a man rolling about from side to side, so that you had to 
get out of his way. Strange to say, there are people who consider 
such a sight a matter for laughter and amusement. Why it should 
strike them in this way you and I cannot conceive. We think that 
it is one of the most pitiable and disgraceful things that can hap- 
pen to any human being. This wretched drunken man is one of 
God's creatures. He is created in God's own image. Think if 
you can grasp to the full extent what too much beer-drinking, or 
spirit-drinking, or wine-drinking has turned him into. Instead of 
his being higher than all animals and having dominion over them, 
as the Creator particularly ordained, the poor degraded man, en- 
slaved by drink, has fallen lower than they are. Your donkey, and 
your pet rabbit, and your kitten, and your pony, and your dog 
never take too much to drink. They have a certain limited meas- 
ure of reason which guides them and which they obey. The 
drunken man had the gift of higher or human reason given to 
him, the gift that lifts him to the foremost position among God's 
creatures, and he has thrown away that precious gift for the sake 
of strong drink. 

This wretched man's wife is waiting anxiously for him to come 
home, but in a sober state of mind, of course. Instead of this, 
when she sees him she has to be ashamed of him. Poor woman ! 
she tries to screen her children from his bad example. Think what 
a sad home theirs is. This wretched man has completely for- 
gotten himself, and his family, and his God. He has taken too 
much of that fatal drink, and it holds him in bondage. jHe is 
wasting precious health, precious time, precious affection, and his 
wages which ought to go towards making his family a happy one. 



i64 ' ALL HAIL ' 

Let us learn a lesson from God's flowers. Let us learn a lesson 
from God's animals. What do they do? First of all they never 
take more than they need ; they know when to stop ; they keep the 
law of moderation, and best of all they drink water. Clear, beau- 
tiful crystal water. To drink water does not convert us into crea- 
tures of loathing. We will start a new regime at once and try 
their method. 

From our digression about drinking we return now to King 
Ahasuerus, who had disgraced himself and insulted his wife be- 
cause he was drunk. In this condition he had ordered, as we have 
seen, his queen to do something generally considered ignoble, which 
she refused to do. The seven princes of Persia and Media, who 
were the king's chamberlains, through their spokesman Memucan, 
advised the king to make an example of Vashti for her disobe- 
dience, to get rid of her altogether by an irrevocable decree, and 
to fill her place with another who should be better than she. One 
young woman out of all the virgins in the realm was chosen by 
the king to be queen in Vashti's place. This was not till some 
years after, for Vashti was disgraced in the third year (i. 3) of 
Ahasuerus (Xerxes), and Esther was made queen in his seventh 
year (ii. 16), the interval being occupied by the king in the ex- 
pedition against Greece, from' which he returned after his great 
defeat at sea. His choice fell upon Esther, whom the king loved 
above all others, so that he set the royal crown upon her head 
and made a great feast to all his princes, even Esther's feast. 

Meanwhile the king had promoted Haman to be the foremost 
man under him in his kingdom, and every one bowed down before 
Haman and reverenced him with the exception of Mordecai. In 
his wrath against Mordecai because he bowed not down, Haman 
plotted to destroy the people of Mordecai, the whole of the Jews 
in Persia, and obtained letters from the king to all the provinces 
to destroy all the Jews, young and old, and to take their spoil for 
a prey. Thereupon Mordecai put on sackcloth with ashes and 
gave himself up to lamentation. Presently he was able to make 
known the whole plot of Haman to Esther, and the impending 
destruction of the Jews. He urged her to go in unto the king and 
make supplication to him for her people. Esther replied that who- 
ever came in unto the king without being called, the king's law 
doomed to death, except one to whom the king held out the golden 
sceptre that he might live. 'But I have not been called to come in 
unto the king these thirty days.' At last Esther decided to risk 
her life for the sake of her people, and sent a message giving her 
decision to Mordecai : 'Go, gather together all the Jews that are 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 165 

present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink 
three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast like- 
wise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to 
the law; and if I perish, I perish.' 

Thoroughly conscious of the great danger she was in, Esther 
set out on her perilous adventure. She came into the inner court 
of the king's house, and saw the king sitting on his throne, and 
when the king saw her standing in the court he held out to her 
the golden sceptre, and she drew near and touched it. Look at her 
in our picture, just as the king held out his sceptre, at the decisive 
moment of her fate. Esther v. 3: 'Then said the king unto her. 
What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall 
be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.' Esther invited the 
king to a banquet, together with Haman, at which she promised to 
present her petition. At the banquet the king asked Esther : 'What 
is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee.' Esther, in reply, 
asked the king and Haman to another banquet on the morrow, at 
which her petition would be presented. 

That night the king could not sleep, and commanded the book 
of the chronicles (or records of his reign) to be read to him. 
There he found it written that Mordecai had given information 
against two of the king's chamberlains who had plotted against 
their master. What reward, the king inquired, had Mordecai re- 
ceived for this great service? Nothing had been done for him, 
it appeared. Just at that moment Haman came in to ask the king 
about his project of hanging Mordecai on the gallows that had 
been erected for him. The king asked Haman, what shall be done 
to the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Haman had no 
doubt the king meant Haman himself, so he advised that he should 
be arrayed in royal apparel, and put upon the horse the king was 
accustomed to ride on, with the crown royal upon his head, and led 
through the streets of the city by one of the king's most noble 
princes. Thereupon the king said to Haman that Mordecai the 
Jew was the man the king delighteth to honour, and Haman was 
to lead him through the city. This was done, and Haman re- 
turned mourning to his house. 

Then followed the banquet which Esther the queen had prepared 
for the king and Haman. At the banquet the king asked, 'What 
is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee.' Esther 
replied that her petition was for her own life and the life of her 
people. The king asked who dared to threaten them, 'And Esther 
said. The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.' The king 
in his wrath walked into the palace garden, and when he returned 



i66 'ALL HAIL' 

found Haman praying for his life to the queen. Then the king's 
indignation found voice, and as he spoke the attendants covered 
Haman's face, which was the preparation for execution. And one 
of the chamberlains suggested the gallows that Haman had had 
made for Mordecai. 'Then the king said. Hang him thereon,' and 
they hanged him thereon. 

That day the king gave the house of Haman to Queen Esther, 
and took off his ring which he had taken from Haman and gave 
it to Mordecai. Then Esther entreated the king to stop the mas- 
sacre of the Jews while there was yet time. The king could not 
reverse the letters sent by Haman, but wrote in his own name, 
and sealed with the king's ring, letters to all parts of the king- 
dom, empowering the Jews to defend themselves and to slay their 
enemies, and take their spoil for a prey. 

Thus Mordecai was raised to the highest position in the king's 
house, and the Jews smote their enemies with the sword, and even 
in Shushan the palace they slew five hundred men. Thus the Jews 
triumphed over their enemies ; and Mordecai the Jew and Esther 
the queen, as a festival in memorial of this great deliverance, con- 
firmed the days of Purim in their times appointed. Esther ix. 32 : 
'And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim, and 
it was written in the book.' 

The Jewish feast of Purim was held on the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth days of Adar (February-March), and followed a fast on 
the thirteenth day, called the fast of Esther. The Book of Esther 
which was highly esteemed by the Jews, was called the Roll, as the 
favourite one of the Five Rolls, of which the others were the Song 
of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. It was read every 
year at the feast of Purim. The book is a record of a woman's 
noble patriotism, which made her not only risk her high position 
as queen but her very life to deliver her oppressed countrymen. 
Though God's name is never mentioned in this book, the workings 
of an unseen but mighty Providence are felt throughout it. 



CHAPTER XL 
The Book of Job. 

The Book of Job is one of the greatest religious poems of the 
world. It displays throughout a leading characteristic of Eastern 
thought, a consciousness that there are things beyond the range 
of man's following, and that God and the counsels of God are the 
chief of these. Psalm cxxxix. verse 6: 'Such knowledge is too 
wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.' 

This poem of Job is thrown into the form of a dramatic com- 
position, part of it in verse and part in prose. The prologue, or 
introduction, and the Epilogue, or conclusion of the book, are 
written in prose as distinguished from the dialogues, which are 
in verse. Though the poem itself was probably written at a late 
date, it is based on an exceedingly ancient tradition. Job was a 
real historical person, probably in the age of the patriarchs. He 
lived in the land of Uz, possibly on the borders of Idumaea and 
Arabia. The Arabs still claim the Hauran to be the land of Job. 
And this well accords with the allusions of the poem, with the 
robber hands of Sabeans from Sabsea (Sheba) in South Arabia, 
with the desert streams and rocks, and with the whole circum- 
stances of the pastoral life described. Job was what we should 
call to-day a wealthy Arab Sheikh. He owned great numbers of 
sheep, camels, oxen, and asses. He was, of course, not a Jew, 
and the scene is entirely outside of Palestine, and the worship is 
of the simplest patriarchial kind. There is no direct reference to 
the laws and customs or beliefs of the Jews. There is not an al- 
lusion to Jewish history. Job's God is not the God of a chosen 
people, but the God of all mankind. If we take the Book of Job 
to be a consummate work of art, written in its final form at a 
late date, possibly during the Captivity or soon after the Return, 
we are better able to understand the depth and complexity of the 
religious problems it raises, problems which could hardly have 
had any existence in this developed form for a man living in pa- 
triarchial times. Contrast the absence of any questioning of God's 
dealings which we find in Abraham with the questioning, problem- 
haunted mind which we find in the Book of Job. Job was a man 
of high and noble character, and deeply religious, for in the Pro- 
logue we read that his sons and his daughters were feasting, and 

167 



i68 'ALL HAIL' 

when this was over Job 'rose up early in the morning, and offered 
burnt offerings according to the number of them all : for Job said, 
It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their 
hearts. Thus did Job continually' (Job i. verse 5). Intercession 
for others is one of the true signs of deep-rooted religion, and this, 
we see, was one of the habits of Job's daily life. 

The Prologue introduces us to Job at the time of his prosperity. 
The opening words of the Prologue are (chapter i. verse i) : 
'There was a man in the land of \Jz, whose name was Job ; and 
that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and 
eschewed evil.' 

You see the whole character of the man before you : you also 
see here a picture of the outward man, in which a distinguished 
Italian artist has handed down an ideal or imaginative portrait of 
the patriarch to us. In the scene in Heaven, which is part of the 
Prologue, we read the following (Job i. verse 6) : 'Now there 
was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves be- 
fore the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord 
said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the 
Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from 
walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast 
thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the 
earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and 
escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Doth 
Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about 
him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? 
thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is in- 
creased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all 
that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord 
said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only 
upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from 
the presence of the Lord.' 

Of course it is obvious that this scene in Heaven is a dramatic 
picture, figurative and imaginative, and not to be taken literally. 
At the period when the Book of Job was written in its final form, 
it is perfectly evident that the idea of Satan was not the same as 
ours is to-day. Satan represents to us our experience of evil as 
gathered up in the conception of one evil spirit; and part of our 
experience, the beginnings of evil, is that temptation comes to us 
from without. In some cases temptation assails us with a knowl- 
edge of our weakness, and a malignity that seems to point to a 
person at our side who has evil intentions against us. 

The conception of Satan is subject to the law of gradual develop- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 169 

m'ent in the Old Testament. It becomes definite and clear only in 
works written after the Exile. For example, in 2 Samuel xxiv. 
verse i we read: 'And again the anger of the Lord was kindled 
sgainst Israel, and he moved David against them to say. Go num- 
ber Israel in Judah.' And David, thus moved by the Lord, com- 
pelled Joab to number the people. The result of this numbering 
was a terrible judgment from the Lord on the nation. Three- 
score and ten thousand died by the pestilence which David had 
chosen, as the best choice of the three punishments offered by the 
Lord through David's seer, Gad. This accotmt in the version of 
the same story after the Exile, i Chronicles xxi. verse i, takes the 
following form : 'And Satan stood up against Israel, and pro- 
voked David to number Israel.' 

The altered form may be thus explained. In the earlier period 
of the history of Israel, even till after the return from the Exile, 
there was no difficulty felt in ascribing everything, good and bad 
alike, to Jehovah. The Hebrew's vivid consciousness of God saw 
God in everything and everything in God. Gradually his concep- 
tion of God, as the All-powerful Cause of all things, was modified 
by a new conception of God as All Good. The difficulty of account- 
ing for the presence of evil in a world ruled by an All-powerful 
and All-good God began to exercise more pressure, and Satan, or- 
iginally an angel of God sent to try men, became more and more 
the responsible cause of evil. 

Probably the earliest mention of Satan by name in the Bible is 
to be found in Zechariah iii. i : 'And he shewed me Joshua, the 
high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan stand- 
ing at his right hand to resist him.' When we compare the ac- 
count of Satan in Job, taking the actual composition of Job to be 
after the Exile, with Miciah's vision in i Kings xxii. 22, we see 
that the relations of Jehovah and the evil spirit in Micaiah's vision, 
and the relations of Jehovah and Satan in the Prologue of the 
Book of Job, are considerably altered. The situation is almost the 
same in both cases ; in both we have the Court of Heaven pictured 
for us. In the first case the Lord asks who shall persuade Ahab 
that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead. Then a spirit came 
forth and stood before the Lord, and offered to persuade him, as 
a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. Then God says, 'Thou 
shalt persuade him, and prevail also; go forth and do so' (i Kings 
xxii. 22). 

Now, in the scene in Heaven given us in Job, Satan takes his 
place among the sons of God, and gives an account of his actions, 
and takes his orders from God. But here God is not in accord 



170 'ALL HAIL' 

with the spirit of his malicious angel. God supports Job's char- 
acter and cause. Satan (the adversary) attacks both. God de- 
sires the vindication of Job's righteousness ; Satan, the exposure 
of its speciousness. Good-will to the righteous man is the char- 
acteristic of God in Job; ill-will is the characteristic of Satan. But 
God and Satan are not represented as distinctly hostile powers. 
Satan gives account of his doings to God, and requires permission 
from God before he can assail Job, and is obliged to keep to the 
conditions God has laid down. But the subject is a very deep one. 
We have only put forward a few suggestions towards a better un- 
derstanding, while it is certainly the teaching of the Bible — more 
fully developed in the New Testament — that Satan exists as a cen- 
tre of evil influence. This is part of the great Problem of Evil, 
and our best attitude towards that problem is a frank acknowledg- 
ment of human limitations. The wisest course with all such prob- 
lems is to adopt the attitude of St. Paul, so well expressed in i 
Corinthians xiii. 12: 'Now we see in a mirror darkly (R.V.), but 
then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know 
(fully) even as also I am (fully) known.' 

To return to Job. First a messenger came to Job to say that the 
Sabseans had carried away his oxen and his asses, and slain his 
servants with the edge of the sword. While the first messenger 
was speaking, another arrived to say that fire from God had fallen 
from heaven (lightning) and burnt up the sheep and the servants. 
Before he had done, another came and said that three bands of 
Chaldasans had fallen on the camels and carried them away, and 
slain the servants with the edge of sword. While he was yet 
speaking came another, and said that while his sons and daughters 
were feasting, a great wind from the wilderness blew down the 
house upon their heads, and the young men were dead. Here is 
the grand way in which we see Job receiving the terrible news 
and accepting it as from God (Job i, 21) : — 'Naked came I out of 
my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and 
the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' 

Satan meanwhile was beginning to realise that he had not so 
easy a task as he had supposed. He found that he was powerless 
to overcome Job. Nothing seemed to move the righteous man 
from his fixed principles; Job remained steadfast in his belief in 
God. In response to Satan's assertion that if God touched Job 
with disease he would curse God to his face, God gave Satan per- 
mission to touch Job, and Satan went forth from God's presence 
and smote Job with sore boils, i.e., with a terrible form of lep- 
rosy, called elephantiasis. Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 171 

still retain thine integrity? Curse (R.V. renounce) God and die. 
But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women 
speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and 
shall we not receive evil?' (Job ii. 9). 

Job's three friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar heard of the evil 
v/hich had come upon him, and 'made an appointment together to 

come to mourn with him, and to comfort him So they 

sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, 
and none spake a word unto him : for they saw that his grief was 
very great (Job. ii. 11). 

Job felt their silent sympathy very deeply, and his anguish burst 
forth in an exceedingly bitter cry for the deliverance of death. He 
longs for the place where 'the wicked cease from troubling,' and 
where 'the weary art at rest.' He wishes that he had never been 
born. His friends begin at first very gently to hint at the view 
they hold of his sufferings. Their view is the popular view of the 
time, and it was mainly for the purpose of combating this view, 
and showing it to be untenable, that the Book of Job was written. 

That view may be briefly put thus : It holds that God is the 
Absolute Ruler of the Universe, and that men are always pun- 
ished and rewarded exactly' according to their deserts in this life. 
All suffering, according to this view, is a penalty for sin, and all 
prosperity is a reward for goodness. Hence Job's friends con- 
clude that his exceptional sufferings are the punishment of ex- 
ceptional sin, and they press him, gently at first, and gradually more 
urgently, to the only course that will meet his position, as they 
see it, namely, that he should make a clean breast of his guilt and 
frankly confess his sin. Job continues to defend himself. He is 
perfectly convinced, that though not free from the general imper- 
fections of man, he is unconscious of any special guilt, and his 
sufferings are, in his opinion, far too severe and exceptional to be 
explained as due to his share of the general imperfection of man. 
But so deep is his sense of his sufferings, that he goes beyond the 
mere cry for the deliverance of death with which he began, and 
bitterly arraigns God for the cruel bondage to which he is sub- 
jected. His friend Bildad replies with the strongest disapproval 
of Job's attitude (Job viii. verse 3) : 'Doth God pervert judg- 
m.ent? or doth the Almighty pervert justice? If thy children have 
sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their trans- 
gression ; .... if thou wert pure and upright ; surely now 
he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy right- 
eousness prosperous Behold, God will not cast away 

a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers.' 



172 'ALL HAIL' 

Job, in his reply to his friends, admits that no man can be just 
before God. God's power is so great, that no man, however inno- 
cent, can successfully plead before with him. But so far from God's 
justice discriminating between the guilty and the guiltless, he 
smites all alike. Job ix. verse 22 : 'This is one thing, therefore I 
said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If the scourge 
slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent. The earth 
is given into the hand of the wicked : he covereth the faces of the 
judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?' (R.V., 'if it be 
not he, who is it?') He goes on to wonder what is the purpose 
for which God afflicts him. He arrives at the agonising thought 
that all God's favours in the past were only poured out, that He 
might torture him in the end. The more Job asserts his innocence 
and arraigns God's justice, the more plainly and frankly do his 
friends condemn him. Eliphaz says (Job xv. verse 4) : 'Yea, thou 
castest off fear, and restrainest prayer before God. For thy mouth 
uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 
Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I : yea, thine own lips 
testify against thee.' 

Then he goes on to draw a lurid picture of the man with an 
evil conscience, too long to quote here, but drawn with extraor- 
dinary power. At last, after several further speeches, intended 
by his friends to arouse Job's conscience, they directly accuse him 
of the great and flagrant sins they have before only hinted at, and 
suggested. The whole long series of speeches requires to be studied 
in detail, and is full of passages that will repay such study. 

And now comes the grand climax of the poem. The Lord him- 
self appears and answers Job. Chapters xxxviii. and xxxix. : 
'Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind,' &c., &c. This 
theophany, or manifestation of God, goes on in a succession of 
questions, each of which carries home to Job the sense of his own 
insignificance and ignorance, and the sense of the Omnipotence and 
Omniscience of God. Then Job, overwhelmed, briefly answers 
(Job xl. verse 4) : 'Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? 
I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken ; but 
I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.' 

This first speech of God completely convinces Job of the tran- 
scendent greatness of his Creator, and he feels and owns his pre- 
sumption in daring to contend with God. The teaching of Jeho- 
vah's speech is plain. If Job cannot understand the mystery of the 
visible world, how can he hope to understand the mystery of God's 
government of the world, and especially the great mystery of His 
government of man? 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 173 

The second speech, though it contains the celebrated descriptions 
of Behemoth (elephant) and Leviathan (crocodile), falls short of 
the first. It is perhaps not too much to say with a great Hebraist, 
'the first speech of Jehovah transcends all other descriptions of 
the wonders of Creation, of the greatness of the Creator, which 
are to be found in the Bible or elsewhere.' 

Job is completely convinced by the words of the Almighty and 
brought to a right frame of mind, a deep humility that leaves no 
room for the old doubts of God's justice. Job xlii. verse 3 : 'There- 
fore have I uttered that I understand not' (says Job to God) ; 
'things too wonderful for me which I know not .... I have 
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth 
thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' 

The dialogues between Job and his friends solve the main 
problem of the book, by showing the falsity of the traditional 
theory that all suffering is a penalty for sin and all prosperity 
a reward for goodness ; and this solution is approved by the Al- 
mighty Himself. Speaking out of the whirlwind the Almighty 
teaches the lesson, as true essentially to-day as when it was writ- 
ten, that it is impossible for finite man with his necessarily limited 
vision to enter into the counsels of God, or to judge the justice 
of the dealings of God with man. The minor question which is 
also answered is this: Can man love and fear God disinterestedly? 
The history of Job shows that he can. 

The Epilogue which immediately follows brings Job's troubles 
to an end. God commends Job and accepts him, and severely con- 
demns his friends. Then Job, forgiving all their charges, prays 
for his friends. Job ends happily (xlii. verse 12) : 'So the Lord 
blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had 
fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand 
yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons 
and three daughters .... After this Job lived an hundred 
and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four 
generations.' 

We have said that the first speech of Jehovah in the Theophany 
in the Book of Job (chapters 38 and 39) is described by a great 
Hebraist as of transcendent grandeur. A yet more remarkable 
testimony to the worth of the whole book comes from a great in- 
dependent judge of literature, Thomas Carlyle : 'I call that book, 
apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever 
written with pen. One feels indeed as if it were not Hebrew: 
such a noble universality, different from' noble patriotism or noble 
sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble book: all men's book. It is 



1 



174 'ALL HAIL' 

our first oldest statement of the never-ending problem — man's des- 
tiny and God's way with him here on earth; grand in its sincerity 
and in its simplicity. There is nothing written, I think, in the 
Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.' 

The problem of the suffering of the righteous in this world is 
with us still, and when we see undeserved misfortunes crowding 
on the head of one who has done nothing to deserve such punish- 
ments, we sometimes feel at a loss to understand this mystery of 
God's government. But we have guidance Job did not possess to 
enable us to retain our trust in God's love and care in the face 
of what seems to us so contrary to such faith. We look to the 
Cross of Christ, and there we see what must have seemed to those 
who saw the Crucifixion the cruellest justice, the cruellest inflic- 
tion of unspeakable suffering on The Sinless One. 

Anybody who had the questioning mind of Job and saw the 
mockery of the Trial of Christ and the atrocious injustice of His 
Crucifixion might well have asked, standing by the foot of the 
cross, 'Why has the Father He trusted in thus forsaken His Son? 
Yet we, who see now that the Son won His perfect victory through 
those sufferings, that, as the Old Fathers said, 'He reigns from the 
Cross,' can understand that the suffering was necessary to the 
victory, and also how it is that the Apostle boldly describes this 
supreme instance of permitted injustice as the supreme instance 
of Divine love. 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should .... 
have everlasting life' (St. John iii. verse i6). 



CHAPTER XII. 

Psalms — Proverbs — Ecclesiastes — The Song of Songs. 

We have come now to the Book of Psalms, the well-known col- 
lection of religious poems that bear that name. The word Psalms 
came to be employed for these religious poems in this way. The 
translators of the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Bible, used 
the Greek word Psalmos (which means, first of all, the music of 
a stringed instrument) to translate the Hebrew word Mizmor, 
which means a song with an accompaniment of instrumental music. 
The whole collection was called Psalms, or the Book of Psalms, 
by our Lord (Luke xx. 42). In the Hebrew Bible the title of the 
Book of Psalms is 'Praises,' a title which probably was due to the 
use of the book in the services of the Temple. Another Hebrew 
title of the book was 'Prayers.' The Psalter, a later word for the 
Book of Psalms, originally signified in Greek a stringed instru- 
ment. Most of the Psalms have titles, but the meanings of the 
titles are very uncertain, and often have to be admitted to be con- 
jectural. 

We have already explained the word Psalm {mizmor), the title 
prefixed to fifty-seven psalms, generally with the addition of the 
name of the author, who is usually David. 'Song,' a general term 
for canticle, occurs in the titles of thirty psalms. A word which 
occurs very frequently in the Psalms, though it does not occur 
in the titles, is the word 'Selah,' which is generally taken to signify 
£ direction for the stringed instruments to strike up. The word 
occurs seventy-one times in the Psalms ; elsewhere in the Old 
Testament only three times, in Habakkuk iii. There are many 
other titles in the Psalms, but we must be content to mention only 
a few. A 'song of degrees,' or goings-up, is the title of fifteen 
psalms (cxx.-cxxxiv.), which seem to have been a separate col- 
lection. The probable meaning comes from' the use of the word 
to go up, to signify the making of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the 
great festivals. The songs of the goings-up would signify the songs 
sung at such pilgrimages. Some of tbe titles refer to the author- 
ship, or to the source from which they were taken. 

There are one hundred and fifty Psalms. Of these one bears 

175 



176 'ALL HAIL^ 

the name of Moses. Seventy-three psalms (nearly half the num- 
ter) the name of David, but this only means that they belonged 
to a collection, and bore King David's name as the most illustrious 
of its authors. Ten psalms bear the name of the sons of Korah, 
which means, not that the sons of Korah composed each psalm as 
joint authors, but that each psalm which bears this title comes 
from the collection of the sons of Korah. Probably this is also 
the case with the twelve psalms which bear the name of Asaph, 
who was one of David's chief musicians. Two psalms bear the 
name of Solomon. Owing to its use in the daily services of the 
Church, people are far more familiar with the Prayer-book ver- 
sion of the Psalms than with the version in the Bible. The Prayer- 
book version is much older than the Bible version. The former 
version comes from the Great Bible, of which the first edition was 
published in 1539, and which itself was a revised form of Mathew's 
Bible, published 1537. The version of the Psalms in Mathew's 
Bible was written by Coverdale, and based on the Latin and Ger- 
man versions. Form' the last edition of this Bible, in 1540, the 
Prayer-book Psalter is taken. Our familiar version of the Psalms 
in the Bible of 161 1 is more accurate than the Prayer-book Psalter, 
but much less musical and melodious. The Prayer-book version, 
from its regular use in devotion, has helped to form the religious 
habit in mind in the nation, and it is through it that the Hebrew 
Psalmists have exercised, and do still exercise, their marvellous 
influence on the religious consciousness in England to-day. 

The emotional religious life of the individual finds a more per- 
fect expression through the Psalms than through any other writ- 
ings. The Book of Psalms has been, with reason, called the heart 
of the Bible. The meaning of such perfect expession of personal 
feeling towards God, and personal experience of His dealings, is 
not confined to the sense in which the Psalmist wrote^ but grows 
in richness of significance with the passage of the centuries. 
Though the words are the words of the Jewish Church, yet the 
Christian Church uses them as finding them luminous with the beams 
of Him who is its Sun. 

The Psalms are religious lyric poetry, and the writers of this 
poetry prepared the way for Christ, as truly as did the prophets. 
The regular use of the Psalms in the worship of the Temple kept 
bright the Messianic hope in the hearts of the people. They 
pointed to the coming of the Messiah in various aspects, and in 
different manners, though, till the actual coming illuminated the 
foreshadowings of the divine purpose, those foreshadowings had 
been faint and dim, except to the future-seeing eye of some 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE I77 

prophet, or to the simple faith of devout souls. In two aspects 
especially the Messiah is set forth in the Psalms. 

First, as the Kingly Messiah. In the Kingdom of David, which 
was the ideal kingdom of Israel, the king regarded himself, and 
was regarded, not as an Eastern autocrat, but as God's anointed, 
appointed by God as His Viceroy, in which capacity he was prom- 
ised the sovereignty of the nations. The Messianic king is re- 
garded as God's son and representative in Psalm ii., and in Psalm 
xviii., David's great Psalm of Thanksgiving, where David says: 
'Thou hast delivered me from the striving of the people; and thou 
hast made me the head of the heathen : a people whom I have not 
known shall serve me.' David sees that he was given this position 
as head of the heathen or nations in order that he may offer 
thanks unto the Lord among the nations and give praises unto His 
name. David's successors failed to fulfil David's hopes, and pious 
souls who used the Psalms in worship were led to look for the 
coming of a king who would bring to pass the long-postponed ful- 
filment. 

Secondly, the Messiah is regarded as the Suffering Messiah. If 
the minds of men had to be prepared for the Kingly Messiah, much 
more had they to be prepared for the Suffering Messiah. Suffer- 
ing of the good for God's sake had to be shown to be the way to 
victory, the way of deliverance for mankind. In a very wondrous 
way the foreshadowings of the sufferings of Christ in the Psalms 
give a picture of the Messiah that was to be found true many cen- 
turies after, even in minute details. This does not seem to have 
been perceived by the Jewish Church. It was Christ Himself who 
first revealed to His disciples that His sufferings had been fore- 
ordained. Among the Psalms that speak of the Suffering Messiah, 
the twenty-second Psalm is pre-eminent. It foretells the Passion, 
and our Lord's use of the first words on the Cross at the most 
solemn time of His suffering: 'My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?' marks it out unmistakably as pointing to Him, and 
fulfilled in Him. 

Take again the sixty-ninth Psalm, which tells of one persecuted 
for the sake of God: 'For thy sake have I borne reproach; shame 
hath covered my face.' Again: 'Reproach hath broken my heart, 

and I am full of heaviness They gave me also gall for 

my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' Of 
these and many other Messianic Psalms it has been said that they 
have a primary historical sense which concerns the circumstances 
under which they were written, and a secondary prophetic sense, 
the sense in which they are now understood by the Christian 



178 ' ALL HAIL ' 

Church. As a matter of fact, the primary and secondary sense are 
steps in the interpretation of God's purpose. That is, it was the 
illumination which came from' the actual sufferings of Christ that 
at last made. the Psalms of His Passion fully understood. 

One more group of Psalms we may glance at here. As we can 
see now, they point to the central event of the world's history, the 
Incarnation. Those are the Psalms that look forward to the Com- 
ing of God Himself, both as Judge and Redeemer. Take, for ex- 
ample, the words of such a psalm' as Psalm Ixviii. verse i8: 'Thou 
hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast 
received gifts for men ; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord 
God might dwell among them.' This is applied to our Lord by 
St. Paul in Ephesians iv. verse 8. Again the words of the Psalm 
cii. verses 25, 26: 'Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the 
earth : and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall per- 
ish, but thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall wax old like a gar- 
ment; as a vesture shall thou change them, and they shall be 
changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end,' 
are applied by the author of the Epistle of the Hebrews to God's 
Son, 'whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he 
made the worlds' (chapter i. verse 2). 

Thus the Psalms prepared the minds of men for the Coming of 
Christ. A difficulty which tries many, and tries them repeatedly, 
owing to the regular use of the Psalter in church, is to be found 
in the many expressions in which the Psalmist entreats God to 
destroy his enemies, or rejoices when that destruction is accom- 
plished. Of course, such prayers for vengeance are by no means 
confined to the Psalms: there are numbers of them in the Book of 
Jeremiah. The explanation is that they belong to the Old Dispen- 
sation — the Rule of the Law, which is based on the principle of 
retaliation — and not to the New Dispensation, based on the Revela- 
tion of an All-loving God given at a later date in Jesus Christ. 
Our Lord clearly revealed that the Old Dispensation was inferior 
to the New. His words are unmistakable. Matthew v. verse 43: 
'Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, 
and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray 
for them which despitefuUy use you, and persecute you.' 

We must remember that it was a great step forward when the 
men of the Old Testament, instead of taking vengeance privately 
themselves, were content to leave vengeance to God, as David was 
when he spared Nabal. See i Samuel xxv. verses 32, S3> 39- The 
Psalmists, in common with the Prophets, saw life as a continual 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE i79 

battle between God and His enemies, and when the ungodly were 
triumphant and the godly were overwhelmed by them, it seemed to 
them that the cause of God was losing, and in praying for the de- 
struction of the wicked, they felt they were praying for the cause 
and the triumph of God. 

We have been taught to distinguish between the sin and the sin- 
ner. They identified them. It was clear that wickedness was to be 
destroyed, and they could nor separate this destruction from the 
destruction of the wicked. Again, the prayers for vengeance which 
seem to us most revolting are those which include the wrong- 
doer's whole family in the punishment, as Psalm cix. verse 9: 
'Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his 
children be continually vagabonds, and beg. .... Let there 
be none to extend mercy unto him : neither let there be any to favour 
his fatherless children. Let his prosterity be cut off.' 

In the days of the Old Testament writers, as we have before ob- 
served in dealing with Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac, a 
man's family was regarded as a part of the man and as rightly in- 
cluded in any retribution for his wickedness. The rights and re- 
sponsibilities of the individual members of the family as independent 
from the father, did not then exist. 

These prayers for vengeance, be it remembered, belong to the 
Jewish Church, which realised God's universal justice, but not His 
universal Love. The spirit of the Jewish Church expresses itself in 
the words of King Joash (2 Chronicles xxiv. verse 22) : 'The Lord 
look upon it, and require it' The spirit of the Christian Church 
expresses itself in the prayer of the dying Stephen for his murder- 
ers (Acts vii. verse 60) : 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,' 
which is evidently a faithful following of our Lord's prayer while 
they were nailing Him to the Cross. 

A word more. The Psalmists wrote as men who longed intensely 
for God to assert His power and to rule on the earth. That was 
the truth which was most necessary, and most deeply realised in 
their time. Their passionate longing for Divine Justice to assert 
itself was right. The mode in which they expected the Divine 
Justice to assert itself was misconceived by their human blindness; 
human nature being steeped in imperfection. Furthermore, though 
they did not regard death as complete annihilation, they regarded 
the after-life in 'Sheol' as a life of sadness in a Shadowland. There- 
fore they regarded the assertion of God's justice as to be effected 
here on earth, now or never. 

In using these imprecatory Psalms, it may be found helpful to 
let them remind us of our great privileges and blessings under the 



i8o ' ALL HAIL ' t 

New Dispensation, and to let the thought of their passionate de- 
votion to the cause of God, though so far from the full light of the 
Christian Dispensation, urge us who have emerged from the twi- 
light of the Old Dispensation to emulate their earnestness. They 
walked often more successfully in the way of the Lord in the twi- 
light of the gradual dawning of Revelation than we do in the 
broad daylight of its noon. 

A few last words as to the value of the Psalms. Our Lord's 
habitual use of them shows what a comfort and support they were 
to the most hardly tried and the only Perfect Life. Not only did 
He use the Psalms upon the Cross, and sing with His disciples the 
great Hallel Psalm (cxiii. — cxviii.), at the Last Supper, but with 
the words of a psalm on His lips He died. He found in the Psalms 
the predictions of His own personal experience, as in the words He 
spoke to His disciples concerning the traitor Judas (John xiii. 
verse i8) : *I speak not of you all : I know whom I have chosen : 
but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with 
me hath lifted up his heel against me.' The words of Psalm xli. 
verse 9, are: 'Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, 
which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.' 

After His Resurrection again, Our Lord instructed His disciples, 
when He appeared to them in the upper room, as to the way in 
which the Psalms, as well as the other writings of the Old Testa- 
ment, had prepared for His Advent. Luke xxiv. verse 44: 'And 
he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, 
while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which 
were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the 
psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that 
they mJght understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it 
is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from 
the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins 
should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Je- 
rusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things.' Our Lord's teach- 
ing and example turned the minds of the Christian Church to the 
Psalms, and to the study of them we owe the Magnificat, the Bene- 
dictus, and the Uunc Dimittis. 

St. Paul urges on his converts at Ephesus the use of the Psalms. 
Ephesians v. verse 19: 'Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the 
Lord.' Also in Colossians iii. verse 16: 'Let the word of Christ 
dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one 
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace 
in your hearts to the Lord.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE i8i 

The experience of many generations of Christians since then has 
confirmed the experience of those of the first century, and estab- 
lished the supreme vakie of the Psalms, as the natural expression 
of religious emotion under all circumstances and for all sorts and 
conditions of men. It has been well said by Stanley, 'the Psalter 
alone, by its manifold applications and uses in after times, is a 
vast palimpsest written over and over again; illuminated, illus- 
trated by every conceivable incident and emotion of men and 
nations. 

We now pass on to the Book of Proverbs, which is always as- 
sociated with the name of King Solomon. We read in i Kings 
iv. 32, of Solomon's fame as a writer of proverbs and songs : 'And he 
spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and 
five.' Part of the Book of Proverbs is plainly stated to be his, 
that is, to be at least a collection made by him, or of which he was 
the most distinguished author, namely, the portion beginning at 
chapter x. i : 'The proverbs of Solomon,' and ending at chapter 
xxii. 16. This is undoubtedly the centre of the book. 

Each verse of this central portion consists of seven to eleven words 
complete in itself. This part of the book consists of Proverbs so 
called; the previous chapters of the book are a kind of introduction 
to the whole book which follows. This introduction consists of 
the praise of wisdom, and Solomon is named as the author; but 
in verse 6 the intention is expressed of attaining to the understand- 
ing and interpretation of 'the words of the wise and their dark 
sayings.' The central part of the book — chapters x, i-xxii. 16 — 
stated to be the Proverbs of Solomon, is followed by the section 
chapters xxii. 17 — xxiv. 22. This section is headed 'The Words of 
the Wise.' 'Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise.' 
To this is added a short section headed, 'These things also belong 
to the wise.' 

The next division of the book is a collection of Proverbs headed, 
'These are also proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah 
king of Judah copied out.' Here, too, as in the section consisting 
of chapters x. i-xxii. 16, each verse forms an independent proverb, 
with but few exceptions. 

Chapter xxx. is headed, 'The words of Agur the son of Jakeh.' 
Chapter xxxi. is headed, 'The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy' 
(i.e., oracle, R.V.), 'that his mother taught him,' cautioning him 
against drink and bad women. This teaching of a wise mother 
says: 'It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink 
wine; nor for princes strong drink.' Total abstinence is plainly 
recommended as a part of true wisdom. The purpose of the Book 



i82 'ALL HAIL' 

of Proverbs is to teach the art of living well; the wisdom of daily 
life is the wisdom advised and extolled. 

The whole book ends with a beautiful passage of praise of the 
virtuous woman. It is plain, then, from the contents of the book 
itself, the safest source from which to seek information, that the 
Book of Proverbs is a compilation of sayings by different authors. 
It is a part of the 'wisdom-literature' of the Jews. It is full of 
practical morals, with very few references to religious beliefs, which 
are taken for granted. It studies and illustrates the principles of 
human conduct, and traces out to their consequences the practical 
results of right and wrong doing. Considerable knowledge of ex- 
ternal nature as well as great knowledge of human nature is dis- 
played, and in this connection we may remember that in i Kings iv. 
33, it is said of Solomon that 'he spake of trees, from the cedar 
tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out 
of the wall : he spake aslo of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping 
things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the 
wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard 
of his wisdom.' For the proverbs themselves we refer our readers 
to the book, especially to the section headed, 'The Proverbs of Sol- 
omon,' chapter x.-xxii. verse 15, which are proverbs properly so 
called, and chapters xxv.-xxix., which are very similar. 

We come next to a book which bears as its title the name of Eccles- 
iastes, the translation into Greek of the Hebrew word Koheleth, 
meaning the preacher, or orator, or teacher, which is the name 
repeatedly given to Solomon in this book. It is composed of medi- 
tations on individual and social life ascribed, by perfectly legiti- 
mate because perfectly transparent literary device, to the great 
king Solomon. The writer begins by putting into Solomon's mouth 
the conclusions to which his study of life had brought him: 
'Vanity of vanities .... vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under 
the sun?' (chapter i. verses 2, 3). 

Is life worth living? and how best is happiness to be attained? 
are the questions of permanent interest which the writer has set 
himself to answer, and if his answer is not satisfactory, and never 
confident, he at least retains his faith in the government of God. 
He supports his sad conclusion of the vanity of life by examining 
the various fields of a man's work, and by showing the uselessness 
of it all. There is a weary disgust with life ; a profound disillusion- 
ment, which is entirely unlike the temper and spirit of the men of 
the Old Testament. He begins by showing that whatever a man 
works at, his work has no lasting value. Even the pursuit of knowl- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 183 

edge he finds a failure, its results bringing nothing but perplexity. 
He then tries the pursuit of pleasure, but finds that pleasure brings 
no lasting satisfaction. His experience, indeed, tells him that wisdom 
is better than folly; yet the gain of wisdom he finds to be merely 
ephermeral, for he sees that inevitable death comes and equalises 
the lot of the wise man and the fool. Nor does he think the pursuit 
of riches any better than the pursuit of wisdom, for when obtained 
none can tell who will inherit them. Ecclesiastes ii. verse 19'- 
'Who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall 
he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured .... 
This is also vanity.' 

The conclusion at which he arrives is given thus in chapter ii. 
24: 'There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and 
drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.' 
Yet, even here, in his complete disillusionment, he recognises the 
government of God ; he accepts the world as it is — as ruled by God 
— saying : 'This also I saw ; that it was from the hand of God' 
(verse 24). He believes in God, but it is not the joyous confident 
belief of a David, but the admission of a world-worn and a world- 
weary spirit, that does not think life in any way worth living. He 
sees that not only is individual life a failure, but the life of the com- 
munity is no better. Chapter iii. 16, 17 : 'And moreover I saw under 
the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the 
place of righteousness, that iniquity was there. I said in mine 
heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a 
time there for every purpose and for every work.' 

He seems to be convinced that there is no future life to balance 
the injustice of this life, and this want of belief in a future life is 
perhaps one of the chief secrets of his continual depression. To 
understand our author it must be remembered that at the time 
he wrote the hope of immortality was at best a dim intuition, for 
our Lord Jesus Christ had not yet brought immortality and life 
to light by His Gospel. Chapter iii. verses 18-20: 'I said in mine 
heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might man- 
ifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. 
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even 
one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, 
they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above 
a beast : for all is vanity. All go unto one place ; all are of the dust 
and all turn to dust again.' 

In disappointment and disillusionment the book ends as it began. 
Everything is vanity, and the enjoyment in moderation of such 
pleasures as God permits us to have in this puzzling life is the best 



i84 'ALL HAIL' 

course, the author thinks, that is left to man to take. Still, Eccles- 
iastes does not believe that the world is going from bad to worse. 
He does not give up his belief in God. He thinks it is man's duty 
to enjoy the gifts of God, and to remember that the world is ordered 
by God. Even when he has a glimpse of a life beyond the grave, 
and says, Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it' (chapter xii. verse 7), 
he has no thought of the vision of God, and counts even the return 
to God, like everything else, to be vanity. The Epilogue ends with 
the well-known passage, wisely laying down the one thing needful 
for man. Chapter xii. verses 13,14: 'Let us hear the conclusion of 
the whole matter : Fear God and keep his commandments : for this 
is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into 
judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it 
be evil.' 

The Song of Songs, commonly called Canticles, which is the 
exact translation of the Hebrew title of the next book, meaning the 
finest of songs, was publicly read in the Synagogues at the great 
festival of the Passover. It is a poem and evidently a dialogue. 
There are three principal characters — Solomon, the Shulamite 
maiden, and her shepherd lover. The religious and moral purpose 
of the poem is to bring out the importance of human love between 
man and woman as given by God, and the duty of regarding it 
seriously. This is the first meaning of the poem. The plan of it 
is as follows. Solomon had gone on a royal progress to the north 
of his kingdom and met with a Shulamite maiden (probably a form' 
of Shunamite, from Shunem, a town in Issachar) and brought her 
to Jerusalem, where he hoped to win her love and persuade her 
to give up her country home for life at his court. She had, how- 
ever, already given her heart to a young shepherd, and the great 
king's attentions failed to make her forget or abandon him. In 
the end she was allowed to return to Shunem, where she was re- 
stored to her lover. In the eighth chapter the lovers appear aril 
in arm, and declare the supreme value of genuine love over all 
that can be purchased by rank or money. 

Chapter viii. 5-7 : 'Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, 
leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree; 
there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth 
that bare thee. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine 
arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: 
the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement 
flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 185 

drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for 
love, it would utterly be contemned.' 

This is the direct interpretation of the Song of Songs, and is the 
interpretation of some of the best commentators, and this appears 
to be the primary meaning. But a secondary interpretation may be 
added to this, with a gain in the richness of the meaning. The 
heroine's lover represents God. Solomon represents the attractions 
of the world unable to win the hearts of God's faithful servants 
from him. There is also another interpretation, more familiar 
from' the chapter-headings in our authorised version, by which the 
poem is made to be a prophetical description of the love between 
Christ and His Church, and this has been varied by the view that 
it is the love of the individual soul for the Lord, and the Lord's 
love for the individual soul which is represented. Such allegorical 
meanings are quite legitimate as secondary interpretations of the 
meaning of the poem. As representing the love between Christ and 
Llis Church, the primary meaning of the poem is interpreted by the 
after-experience of Christians in the same way in which the pri- 
mary meaning of many prophecies, especially Messianic prophecies, 
is interpreted by the later facts of the Christian Revelation. 

The very high estimate of the book by the Christian Church came 
to it from the Jews, for as early as the first century a.d. R, Akiba 
says, 'for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is a 
''Holy of Holies." ' There is little doubt that in the admission of 
the Song of Songs to the Jewish Canon influence was exercised by 
the scribes, who found in this poem an allegory of the love that 
existed between God and Israel. Thus the allegorical interpreta- 
tion has very old and strong support. Moreover, the reading of 
this book on the eighth day of the feast of the Passover, the feast 
which commemorated Jehovah's deliverance of His people from a 
strange lord and master in order to unite them' to Himself, points 
to the fact of the general Jewish acceptance of the allegorical in- 
terpretation of Jehovah as the Beloved, and His people as His loved 
one. 

According to the paraphrase of the Targum, the history of Israel 
is represented from the Exodus to its redemption in Messianic 
times, when the final union of God and His people will be realised. 
A later Jewish view is very beautiful. It regarded heaven as the 
union of man with God, and death as the kiss of God which seals 
that union. It held that the Song of Songs was the highest expres- 
sion of that union. 

The poetry of the Song of Songs is exceedingly beautiful. The 



i86 * ALL HAIL ' 

author's eye is penetrating and sympathetic. He knows his eastern 
land well. He was evidently well acquainted with the many places 
alluded to: with Kedar, Engedi, Sharon; the hills of Gilead, Her- 
mon, Mahanaim, Carmel ; with northern Palestine, and especially 
with the neighbourhood of Lebanon, which is mentioned repeatedly.. 
His feeling for nature is singularly spontaneous and warm', and 
his joy in the beauty of nature brings vividly before us scene after 
scene of his experiences in northern Palestine, and especially in 
Gilead, east of Jordan. 

As we read his poetry, instinct with the magic of the East, living 
and breathing pictures shape themselves before our eyes. We see 
the doves in the clefts of the rocks, or beside the water brooks ; 
we see the gazelles upon the mountains or feeding among the lilies ; 
we see the goats on the hills of Gilead. We walk with the shep- 
herd lover as he invites his love, in the words of the poet (Song 
of Songs ii. 10-13) '■ 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come 
away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the 
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is 
come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree 
putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape 
give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.' 

There are beautiful descriptions of gardens in this poem, such 
as this in which the poet makes his shepherd lover compare the 
beauty of his bethrothed to a garden in the borders of Lebanon. 
Chapter iv. verses 12-15 • 'A garden inclosed is my sister, my 
spouse ; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an 
orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits ; camphire, with 
spikenard, spikenard and saffron ; calamus and cinnamon, with all 
trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: 
a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from 
Lebanon.' 

This passage, as well as others in the Song of Songs, has been 
freely used by Tennyson in the lyrics of Maud. Without this 
great poem, even if it were only interpreted in its primary sense, 
the Bible would be distinctly the poorer. The writer of the Song 
of Songs sets forth in concrete form one important aspect of that 
central and essential doctrine of the Bible — St. John's doctrine — 
I John iv. 7, 8: 'Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of 
God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 
He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.' 



CHAPTER XIII. 
Isaiah. 

Of the private life of Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets, we know 
but little. The public life we have already considered to some ex- 
tent in our remarks on the Second Book of Kings. We know 
from the sixth chapter of the book which bears his name that he 
was called upon to be a prophet in the last year of the reign of 
King Uzziah, i.e., 740 b. c. He prophesied during the reigns of the 
next three kings— Jotham, Ahaz, and H'ezekiah. He was a married 
man, and he was inspired to give names to his two sons which made 
them living memorials of his teachings. The first was called Ma- 
her-Shalal-hash-baz (i.e., spoil-speed-booty-haste), a reference to the 
Assyrian invasion. The other son was called Shear-jashub {i.e., 
rem^nant shall return), a reference to the central point of his vision 
of a brighter future when the remnant of the nation shall return 
to Jehovah. This symbolical naming of his sons reminds us of a 
characteristic of Isaiah, that while his prophecies are perhaps the 
loftiest and the most far-reaching in the Old Testament, they are 
also most closely connected with the actual life of his time. His 
mission from God was to the whole nation, and in order to influence 
the nation he aimed at the nobility in general, and the king in par- 
ticular. So close was his relation with the court in the reigns of 
Ahaz and Hezekiah that it has been supposed that he was of 
noble family, and the contents of his book point to a man who had 
had the highest education of his time. As a statesman as well 
as a prophet he tried to guide the foreign policy of Judah, especially 
during the two critical periods of the nation's life — in the time of 
the attack by the confederate kings, Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin, 
king of Syria, mentioned in chapters vii. and viii. ; and in the in- 
vasion by Assyria, mentioned in chapters xxxvi. and xxxvii. 

In the first crisis he found that King Ahaz refused his advice, 
and insisted on relying on Assyria instead of Jehovah, In the 
second crisis he succeeded in encouraging Hezekiah to resist Sen- 
nacherib's summons to surrender. The deliverance which Isaiah 
promised in the name of the Lord contrary to all probabilities, actu- 
ally took place. The Angel of the Lord smote in the camp of the As- 
syrians before Jerusalem 185,000 men, probably by a Divine visita- 
tion of pestilence, perhaps of cholera, and thus forced Sennacherib 

187 



i88 ' ALL HAIL ' 

to raise the siege and retire to Assyria. 'With this great visible 
confirmation by God of the source of Isaiah's message, the public 
career of Isaiah ends, and we hear nothing more about him, though 
a tradition assigns to him a martyr's death in the reign of Manasseh. 

An event of far-reaching influence — the expansion of the great 
Assyrian empire — conditioned the whole of his ministry. When 
Isaiah received his call to be a prophet and commenced his ministry, 
the long reign of Uzziah (about fifty years) was drawing to a close. 
Both the northern kingdom and the kingdom of Judah, that of 
Uzziah, had attained a high level of prosperity and wealth: In the 
northern kingdom, another long reign, that of Jeroboam II., had 
extended the limits of the empire to the limits of David's kingdom, 
while Judah, when Isaiah began his ministry in 740 b. c, had 
reached a very high level of military power, as well as of wealth. 

Isaiah ii. verse 7 : 'Their land also is full of silver and gold, 
neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also 
full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots.' But 
this great growth of territory and wealth in Israel and in Judah 
was followed by changes against which Isaiah and. other prophets 
continually raised their voices. The rich nobles got rid of the old 
peasant proprietors, who had been the backbone of the nation, in 
order to form great estates ; and the peasants, thus got rid of, 
became a new class of lawless and destitute men. The eviction of 
peasants was carried out by the corruption of justice, and great 
landowners not only took the place of peasant proprietors, but did 
so by means of the grossest abuses of the forms of justice. 

Isaiah v. verse 8: 'Woe unto them that join house to house, that 
lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone 
in the midst of the earth !' Micah ii. verses 2 and 9 : 'And they covet 
fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: 
so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage. 
. . . . The women of my people have ye cast out from' their 
pleasant houses ; from their children have ye taken away my glory 
for ever.' 

Moreover, the nobility with the growth of wealth developed lux- 
ury and immorality, the women as well as the men of the upper 
classes incurring the severest denunciations of the prophet, which 
may be found in such a passage as Isaiah iii. verses 16-23: 'More- 
over the Lord saith. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and 
walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and 
mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: there- 
fore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the 
daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 189 

In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling 
ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires 
like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the 
bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the 
tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose jewels, the changeable 
suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping 
pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.' 

The habits of the men are denounced with equal severity in 
Isaiah ii. verses 12 and 22 : 'For the day of the Lord of hosts shall 
be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one 

that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low Cease ye 

from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be 
accounted of?' Amd the drunkards Q(f the northern kingdom, 
among whom are the prophets and priests, are scourged with no 
less vigour in chapter xxviii, verses 1-8: *Woe to the crown of pride, 
to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading 
flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are 
overcome with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong 
one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood 
of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the 
hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephriam, shall be 
trodden under feet: and the glorious beauty, which is on the head 
of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit 
(R.V. first ripe fig) before the summer; which when he that looketh 
upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up. In that 
day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a 
diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people, and for a spirit of 
judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them 
that turn the battle to the gate. But they also have erred through 
wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and 
the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed 
up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink ; they 
err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of 
vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.' 

The signs of national decay were to the prophet's eyes foreshadow- 
ings and warnings of the coming of a terrible day of divine judg- 
ment. But in Jerusalem, as well as in Samaria, the kings and their 
courts lived in fancied security, trusting in their wealth and pros- 
perity, and shutting their eyes to the dark storm-cloud of the As- 
syrian empire gathering in the north-east. Such was the very sim- 
ilar condition both of Judah and Israel at the time when Isaiah 
came on the scene as a prophet. 

Probably the great earthquake, which took place in the reign of 



190 'ALL HAIL' 

King Uzzi'ah, and is referred to in the book of Amos (chapter I 
verse i) : 'The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of 
Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of 
Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, 
two years before the earthquake ;' and in Zechariah xiv. verse 5 : 
'And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of 
the mountains shall reach unto Azal : yea, ye shall flee, like as ye 
fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of 
Judah'), impressed Isaiah's mind, and suggested the picture of a 
great day of the Lord, in chapter ii. verse 20: 'In that day a man 
shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they 
made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the 
bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the 
ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, 
when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.' 

When Isaiah appeared on the scene, Amos had already, two 
years before the earthquake, uttered his terrible denunciation of 
Israel at the great Temple of Bethel, andj as Amaziah, the priest of 
Bethel, said to King Jeroboam, 'the land is not yet able to bear all 
his words' (Amos vii. verse 10). 

Hosea had continued the work of Amos in the northern king- 
dom' almost up to the time of Isaiah's appearance in Judah. We 
can better understand Isaiah's account of the Vision of God at his 
call, when we remember that the gerat King Uzziah, who had done 
so much for Judah in his long and successful reign, was just dead, 
or at the point of death ; and this vision was the vision of the true 
King of Israel, Jehovah, who remained though the earthly king was 
gone, and whose spokesman Isaiah was called upon to be. 

The call of Isaiah, which is magnificently described in the sixth 
chapter, was evidently to Isaiah the great event of his life. The 
vision represented in concrete form a great spiritual experience, and 
the prophet became conscious of being called by an All-holy, majes- 
tic, and terrible God to give all his life to be His messenger to 
Israel. 

Isaiah vi, verses 1-8: 'In the year that king Uzziah died, I 
saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his 
train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims : each one had 
six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he cov- 
ered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto an- 
other, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole 
earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the 
voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then 
said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of un- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 191 

clean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for 
mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one 
of the seraphims (personifications of the lightning) unto me, hav- 
ing a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs 
from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, 
this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and 
thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom 
shall I send, and who will go for us ? Then said I, Here am I ; 
send me.' 

The startling warning of the punishment that would fall upon the 
nation for its sin did not exclude the hope that 'the holy seed' 
should remain undestroyed ; i.e., that a remnant of the nation should 
survive the judgment. The word of Jehovah to Isaiah at his call 
contained the essentials of the message he had to bear ; the predic- 
tion of a terrible judgment, always including hopes of restoration 
for the remnant the few that still listened to Jehovah. 

The Book of Isaiah after the first prefatory verse begins with 
the great arraignment, which the prophet utters as spokesman for 
the Lord. It is an arraignment of God's unnatural children for 
ingratitude and unfaithfulness towards their Father. Isaiah i. verses 
2, 3 : 'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth : for the Lord hath 
spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have 
rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his 
master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth not con- 
sider.' 

And the defence that the services of the Temple were carried out 
with great lavishness and pomp is indignantly swept away by the 
prophet. Isaiah i. verses 13-18 : 'Bring no more vain oblations ; in- 
cense is an abomination unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the 
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the 
solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my 
soul hateth : they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. 
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes front 
you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear : your hands 
are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil 
of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do 
well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith 
the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white 
as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' 

This stern condemnation of mere external religion as a substitute 
for hearts and lives turned to the Lord is a characteristic of Isaiah's 
teaching, and, like all his teaching, not without its message for us 



192 ' ALL HAIL ' 

at the present day. It is not that external religion is condemned, 
but to make it of any value it must be the expression of hearts 
and lives devoted to God and to His service, which is the service of 
our fellow-men. Religious experience is, in its essence, the same 
at all times the whole world over. As we read the prophet's ut- 
terances we turn towards God, as the remnant did when they first 
heard it at Jerusalem. Isaiah's denunciation of national sin, and 
national unfaithfulness to God, though strong and repeated, is not 
the main thing in his book. The main thing is the wonderful vision 
of the future, the vision of the Messianic King and the Messianic 
Kingdom. As we read his prophecies the future takes shape before 
our eyes, and gradually, as we study them', becomes well defined and 
clear; just as when travelling we catch sight of what seems a faint 
bank of clouds on the horizon, which, as we approach nearer, we 
discover to be the solid reality of a great mountain range. Here 
let us look at the picture of the great prophet Isaiah. The tablet 
in his hand has Salvatore written on it in large letters. 

We now come to the beautiful parable of the vineyard, addressed 
to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah. The prophet 
tells to his countrymen a simple story of the experiment of a 
friend of his ('my wellbeloved') with his vineyard, and asks for a 
verdict. His countrymen assent to their own condemnation before 
they see that the parable is pointed against themselves. At last 
the prophet throws off all disguise and explains the tn.ie meaning 
of his parable. Here is the parable beginning (Isaiah v. verses 1-7) : 
'Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching 
his vineyard.' (Literally translated: T would sing of my friend, my 
friend's song about his vineyard.') 'My wellbeloved hath a vineyard 
in a very fruitful hill ; and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones 
thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower 
(watch-tower) in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein : 
and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth 
wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of 
Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What 
could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done 
in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, 
brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what 
I will do to my vineyard ; I will take away the hedge thereof, and 
it shall be eaten up ; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall 
be trodden down: and I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, 
nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will 
also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the 
vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE I93 

Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold 
oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.' 

Now we pass to a celebrated passage which describes the sign 
given by the Lord through the prophet to King Ahaz, who refused 
to ask a sign because he had no intention of giving up his plan of 
throwing himself into the arms of Assyria, which Isaiah was 
doing his utmost to prevent. On King Ahaz's refusal the prophet 
said, 'Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you 
to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord 
himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and 
bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall 
he eat, that he may know how to refuse the evil, and choose the 
good. For before the child shall know how to refuse the evil, and 
choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of 
both her kings' (Isaiah vii. verses 13-16). This passage naturally 
brings us to the consideration of the most important part of Isaiah's 
prophecies, the prophecies concerning the Messiah and the Messiah's 
Kingdom. These Messianic prophecies point to the glorious future 
when Messiah shall reign — the Golden Age when the highest ideals 
of humanity shall be realised through a Divine Person, and the king- 
dom He shall establish in the hearts and lives of men. Of course 
the later and fuller meaning which the light of the Incarnation has 
shed upon this passage in Isaiah vii .need not blind us to the orig- 
inal meaning of the sign, the meaning which it would convey to 
King Ahaz and to Isaiah's other contemporaries, a meaning which 
may be summarised as a promise of speedy deliverance from the 
threatened invasion of Judah by the confederate kings, Rezin and 
Pekah. All the allusions in the passage, convey primarilly this orig- 
inal meaning. 

The first of the Messianic visions we shall take is that found in 
chapter ix. which comes like sunrise in the darkness and desolation 
of a foreign invasion. It begins with a burst of rapturous joy: 
'The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they 
that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the 
light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased 
the joy; they joy before thee according to the joy in the harvest, 
and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast 
broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod 
of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the 
warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood ; but 
this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is 
born, unto us a son is given : and the government shall be upon his 
shoulder: and his name shall be called. Wonderful, Counseller, The 



194 'ALL HAIL' 

mighty God, The everlastmg Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the 
increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon 
the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to es- 
tablish it with judgment, and with justice, from henceforth even for 
ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this' (Isaiah ix. 
verses 2-7). Though the translation might be altered in places, yet 
as greater accuracy makes no important change in the sense, this 
powerful prophecy of our Lord's coming may be left as it stands 
in the majestic march of the familiar words of the A.V. 

Next in the order of the Book of Isaiah comes this prophecy of 
the Advent of the Messiah and the establishment of His Kingdom. 
Isaiah xi. verses 1-9: 'And there shall come forth a rod out of 
the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots : and 
the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and 
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowl- 
edge and of fear of the Lord ; and shall make him of quick under- 
standing in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the 
sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but 
with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity 
for the meek of the earth : and he shall smite the earth with the 
rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the 
wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and 
faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with 
the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf 
and the young lion and the fatling together ; and a little child shall 
lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones 
shall lie down together : and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 
And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the 
weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' (viper's) den. 
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain ; for the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover 
the sea.' 

This is the prophecy of the Golden Age brought in by the com- 
ing of the Messiah. Out of the decayed stem of the family of 
David the Messianic King was to arise. The idea of a personal 
Messiah, which was one of the central ideas of Isaiah's prophecies, 
is specially prominent in this passage. The Spirit of the Lord 
gives to the Messiah the qualities of a perfect Ruler, which are 
enumerated. The Messiah has not only the fullest equipment of 
religion Himself, but delights to recognise the possession of it in 
others. The special objects of His protection are the poor and 
down-trodden classes, for the 'meek of the earth' might be trans- 
lated 'the oppressed in the land.' The remarkable point in this 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 195 

prophecy is that the Golden Age is seen as belonging not only to 
men, but to animals. It is the first vision of that Universal King- 
dom of Love on the earth in which the Messiah Himself when He 
came declared 'not one sparrow falleth to the ground without my 
Father.' 

There is a faint echo of this wonderful prophecy in the melodious 
verse of Virgil (Eclogues iv. and v.), also in the Sibylline Oracles, 
and those who know their New Testament will remember the great 
passage in Romans viii. verses 19-22 : 'For the earnest expectation of 
the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For 
the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason 
of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature 
itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.' 

St. Paul's vision of the restoration of human society extends to 
the relations of man to the animal world. On this particular point 
the establishment in the Messianic Kingdom of peace between man 
and his humbler fellow-creatures there is no pronouncement of 
equal value in the whole of the Old Testament. Peace between 
man and man is a characteristic of that Kingdom, and also peace 
between man and lower animal. 

We come next to the great prediction of the Righteous Reign of 
the Messianic King. Chapter xxxii. verses 1-8 : 'Behold, a king 
shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. 
And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert 
from the tempest ; as rivers of waters in a dry place, as the shadow 
of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see 
shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The 
heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue 
of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. The vile person 
shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. 
For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work 
iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, 
to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of 
the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil: 
he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, 
even when the needy speaketh right. But the liberal deviseth 
liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.' 

This vision of the Messianic Kingdom shows us a perfectly right- 
eous government, where not only the King, but the nobility also 
shall do their duty, for each one of them' shall be as a 'hiding place 
from the wind, and a covert from the tempest,' and thus an aris- 



196 * ALL HAIL ' 

tocracy of character shall supersede an aristocracy of birth. The 
true nobleman is contrasted with the churl, or rather, as the word 
means, 'knave,' and true nobility is the distinguishing mark of 
each member of the Kingdom. The prophecy of chapter xxxiii. 
verse 17, is also clearly Messianic, and begins very beautifully: 
Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty, they shall behold the 
land that is very far off,' i.e., wide dominions of the Messiah (R.V., 
a far-stretching land). 

The last chapters of the Book of Isaiah (40-66) now claim our 
attention. They contain some of the most truly inspired passages 
in this book. The later authorship is now generally accepted by 
Biblical scholars. Be that as it may, the writer is one in no degree 
inferior in spiritual vision and inspiration to the writer of the 
preceding chapters. We know for certain, that whatever the exact 
date of these prophecies (they were apparently written between the 
advent of Cyrus and the fall of Babylon), they are the work of 
the highest spiritual inspiration, and quite worthy of their place as 
the second part of this beautiful book of prophecy. The fine 
Prologue is a fitting introduction to the wonderful collection of 
prophecies that follows. 

Isaiah xl. verses i-ii : 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith 
your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, 
that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned : for 
she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The 
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of 
the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
made low : and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough 
places plain : and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all 
flesh shall see it together : for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 
it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh 
is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field : 
the grass withereth, the flower fadeth : because the spirit of the 
Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass with- 
ereth, the flower fadeth : but the word of our God shall stand for 
ever. O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high 
mountain; O 'Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy 
voice with strength ; lift it up, be not afraid ; say unto the cities of 
Judah, Behold your God ! Behold, the Lord God will come with 
strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is 
with him, and his work (R.V. recompense) before him. He shall 
feed his flock like a shepherd : he shall gather the lambs with 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 197 

his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those 
that are with young' (R.V. give suck). 

This picture of the Good Shepherd represents the care with 
which the homeward journey of the Exiles was to be shepherded 
by the Lord. This is perhaps the earliest use made in the Bible 
of this image of the Good Shepherd — an image which is used also 
by Ezekiel, and in the New Testament is freely and still more 
beautifully used by the Lord Jesus. The Messianic element in 
these later chapters of the Book of Isaiah which we are now con- 
sidering has its distinctive features. The first and chief of these 
is the picture of the ideal servant of Jehovah, which is repeated 
v/ith various modifications four times. In some passages Israel is 
the servant of God, but this meaning is not sufficient in others. 
But the ideal servant, representing an ideal Israel, existed for the 
writer of the prophecy as one whom he perceived in the far future, 
and who was not realised in actual life till the coming of our Lord. 
The first of these passages is found in the forty-second chapter 
of Isaiah, verses 1-4; 'Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine 
elect, in whom my soul delighteth ; I have put my spirit upon him : 
he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, 
nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised 
reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench : 
he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be 
discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth : and the isles 
shall wait for his law.' 

The servant in this case is clearly not the actual Israel, and only 
in some sense the ideal Israel, but the meaning is fully satisfied by 
the final application of the prophecy to Christ. The ideal servant 
is also spoken of in chapter xlix. verses 1-6. This passage deals 
with the call and preparation of the servant of Jehovah by his Lord, 
and the meaning is more clearly satisfied by taking it to be a picture 
of the ideal Israel than in the case of the former passage. In 
chapter Hi. verse 13, we enter on the last and most wonderful of 
the pictures of the servant of Jehovah. 

In the former passages the Servant has been described as carry- 
ing out a mission resolutely and confidently as a prophet of God. 
In this passage the Servant appears in a new and marvellous aspect, 
as the Man of Sorrows, the bearer of the sins of the transgressors. 
The details of the picture are so minutely accurate as to make 
this the most wonderful prophecy in the Old Testament, a literal 
prediction of the Passion and Death of the Suffering Messiah. The 
contrast between the undeserved abasement and the unexpected 



198 'ALL HAIL' 

exaltation of the Self-sacrificing Servant of Jehovah is pressed to 
the uttermost in this picture, and has been, with the most marvel- 
lous perfection, fulfilled in the Trial, the Suffering, and the Death 
of the Lord Jesus the true Messiah. 

Isaiah Hi. verse 13, and liii. : 'Behold, my servant shall deal pru- 
dently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many 
were astonied at thee ; his visage was so marred more than any 
man, and his form more than the sons of men: so shall he sprinkle 
many nations ; the kings shall shut their mouths at him : for that 
which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they 
had not heard shall they consider. Who hath believed our report? 
and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow 
up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : 
he hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we shall see him, there is 
no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected 
of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief': and we hid 
as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, and we esteemed 
him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sor- 
rows : yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our 
iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with 
his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray ; we 
have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on 
him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, 
yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the 
slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he 
openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judg- 
ment and who shall declare his generation?' (R.V. 'A.nd as for 
his generation, who among them considered it?') 'For he was cut 
off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people 
was he stricken. And he made (R.V. they made) his grave with 
the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no 
violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the 
Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt 
make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall 
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his 
hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied : 
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he 
shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion 
with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because 
he hath poured out his soul unto death : and he was numbered with 
the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made inter- 
cession for the transgressors.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE i99 

The great mystery of the efficacy of vicarious suffering is a 
prominent part of the picture. The special point of this great sacri- 
fice is that it is voluntary. The Servant Himself, innocent of sin, 
suffers for sinners and does so willingly, in order to deliver them 
from the power of sin. The fifty-fourth chapter is a continuation 
of the prophecies of consolation which began in chapter xlix. Its 
subject is the happiness of Zion in the future, when united to God 
by an everlasting covenant. 

The fifty-fifth chapter is an invitation to individuals to come 
and take the salvation freely offered. The tenderness of this gra- 
cious invitation has been rarely equalled elsewhere even in the Bible. 
It begins : 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, 
and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, 
buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do 
ye' spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for 
that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye 
that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. In- 
cline your ear, and come unto me ; hear, and your soul shall live ; and 
I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies 
of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, 
a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a 
nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall 
run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One 
of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye the Lord while he 
may be found, call ye upon him while he is near : let the wicked 
forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts : and let 
him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him ; and 
to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are 
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. 
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.' 

The sixty-first chapter begins with the words on which our Lord 
preached His first sermon in the synagogtie at Nazareth. Isaiah 
Ixi. verses i, 2: 'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because 
the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; 
he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty 
to the captives, ajid the opening of the prison to them that are 
bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day 
of vengeance of our God.' Our Lord quoted this passage as a pre- 
diction of Himself and His message, and it is noticeable that He 
stopped in the middle of the sentence, omitting the last eight words 
of our quotation.' 

A word as to the value of the Prophet's teaching regarding our 



200 ' ALL HAIL ' 

daily life. What is best in His teaching is of eternal importance, 
and is as well fitted to guide us in the twentieth century in England 
as it was to guide the people of Palestine thousands of years ago. 
Our outer life is different to theirs, but our inner life is the same. 
Lsaiah's teaching is as helpful to direct us in the reiterated daily 
choice between good and evil, which forms character, as it was 
when it was first given. He tells us, for instance, of our Heavenly 
Father's remonstrance with His unnatural children, to whom the 
Prophet was sent : 'I have nourished and brought up children, and 
they have rebelled against me.' 

The natural thing is for children to return their parents' love, 
and to show their gratitude for their parents' care by lives of willing 
obedience. Dutiful children — i.e., children who feel and do their 
duty — will be anxious to cause no pain to their parents through any 
fault of theirs, and all this is doubly true in the case of the Heavenly 
Father of us all. He gives love and care to His little children, and 
also to His grown-up children. We agree with Isaiah for blaming 
the Israelites for not making a proper response. They forgot 
their duty to their Heavenly Father, and a great deal of the Book 
of Isaiah consists of blame for this wrong-doing, and warnings 
against it. When we read them we must apply them to ourselves, 
and see to it that we are not as guilty as the Israelites, or rather, 
more guilty, for we have far greater privileges, and, when we fail 
in love and obedience to our Heavenly Father, are sinning against 
far greater light — the Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world. 

Again, when the Prophet says, 'The ox knoweth his owner, and 
the ass his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth 
not consider,' we must apply the words to ourselves, and examine 
ourselves and see whether we, who are God's people, as Israel was, 
are like Israel, forgetful and thankless. The animals are just as 
much an example to us to-day as they were then. They know their 
master and their master's house. They know the place they live 
in, and that the food that is put in their manger is supplied by him. 
Do we always do so as much as they? Our Heavenly Father pleads 
with us as He did with the Israelites in Isaiah's day: 'Wash you, 
make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well.' This is still a mes- 
sage to us from God, full of wise teaching and tender solicitude 
and pity for His erring children. God desires now as He did then 
to draw His sinful children away from their sins into closest com- 
munion with Himself. 

God's tender pity for His rebellious children, declared so mov- 



' SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 201 

ingly by His Prophet Isaiah for His children at Jerusalem, was 
expressed hundreds of years afterwards still more movingly by 
One far greater than Isaiah. Matthew xxiii. verse yi '■ 'O Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which 
are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
ye would not!' 

Can anything in the world be of greater encouragement and com- 
fort than to know from' Isaiah, and still more perfectly from our 
Lord, that God regards even His black sheep as His sheep still ; 
seeks to bring them back to His flock, keeps a place for them in His 
fold, and considers no pain and trouble that the Shepherd can 
bestow too great to employ in rescuing one single lost sheep. The 
compassionate seeking of the Good Shepherd for the lost sheep, the 
welcome of the loving Father for the Prodigal, is the strongest 
means for drawing rebellious souls back to their God, to receive 
the forgiveness and deliverance from the power of sin which He is 
longing to bestow. ^ 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Jeremiah — Lamentations. 

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah begins : 'The words of Jere- 
miah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in 
the land of Benjamin: to whom the word of the Lord came in the 
days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year 
of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of 
Josiah king of Jiidah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah 
the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jeru- 
salem captive in the fifth month' (Jeremiah i. verses 1-3). 

The chief scene of his ministry was at Jerusalem. He was born 
of a priestly family at Anathoth, not far from Jerusalem, and his 
ministry continued under five different kings — Josiah, Jehoahaz, 
Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. He first appeared in the 
fifteenth year of Josiah's reign, 625 b. c, five years before the year 
in which the Book of the Law was found by Hilkiah in the Temple. 
This was the great event which influenced all Jeremiah's teaching. 
The Book of the Law, it will be remembered we said in our 
sketch of the history of its discovery, was most probably the Book 
of Deuteronomy, for it was read at a single assembly in the house 
of the Lord, and this could not have been the case with so long a 
work as the whole Pentateuch, which Ezra took days to read (2 
Kings xxiii. verse 2). The reading of this book made a deep and 
lasting impression on Jeremiah. His prophecies are full of quota- 
tions from it, and the great sin of idolatry which he denounces so 
powerfully is the object of the severest condemnation in this Book 
of Deuteronomy. 

It will be remembered that Josiah and his people had entered in 
the most solemn way into a public engagement to keep God's Com- 
mandments, and this covenant had been made after Josiah had 
gone up to the house of the Lord and read in the ears of all the 
people the words of the book which had been found there. A great 
reform had followed, in which the king, at any rate, was thoroughly 
in earnest. It was before this reform, while the land was sunk in 
the godlessness, idolatry, and wickedness which King Manasseh had 
fostered, that Jeremiah received his call to be a prophet of the 

202 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 203 

Lord. H'ezekiah, it will be remembered, had carried out a great 
religious reform under the influence of Isaiah; but Manasseh had 
made the condition of Judah and Jerusalem worse than they had 
been before. In particular, he had led the nation into the grossest 
idolatry. He had set up a graven image of the grove that he had 
made in the house of the Lord. He had made his son pass through 
the fire to Molech. He had set up altars for all the host of heaven 
in the courts of the house of the Lord. Josiah, the son of Manas- 
seh's son Amon, carried out, as we have seen, a vigorous reforma- 
tion, but it is quite evident from the prophecies of Jeremiah, that 
the reformation was chiefly external ; successful enough against 
the visible symbols of idolatry, it left the people still completely 
demoralised, to judge from the pictures of their condition which 
are found in Jeremiah's prophecies. The reformation of life and 
morals needed to satisfy God's laws, and to rescue the nation from 
destruction, did not take place. The nation continued on the broad 
and easy way that leads to national disaster. 

From Jeremiah's call, as described by himself in the first chapter, 
we learn that in his great humility he was, like Moses, very unwill- 
ing to accept it. Jeremiah i. verses 6-10: 'Then said I, Ah, Lord 
God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said 
unto me. Say not, I am a child : for thou shalt go to all that I shall 
send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be 
not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith 
the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my 
mouth. And the Lord said unto me. Behold, I have put my words 
in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and 
over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, 
and to throw down, to build, and to plant.' 

The long prophecy beginning in chapter ii. and ending with 
chapter vi. was probably given in the reign of Josiah, 'The Lord 
said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king' (Jeremiah iii. verse 
6). The immorality and idolatry of Israel and Judah are the 
subject of this prophecy, and they are treated under the figure of 
the faithfulessness of two bad wives to their good husband. The 
judgment had already fallen on Israel, and was to come soon to 
wicked and rebellious Judah, for not only were the people guilty, 
but also the prophets and the priests. We learn from' chapter vii. 
how Jeremiah prophesied, at any rate on that occasion. He was 
told to stand in the Gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim this 
word: 'Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah' (verse 2), 
and then follows a long prophecy delivered in the Gate of the 
Temple. The first object of this address was to awaken the people 



204 ' ALL HAIL ' 

from their false security, Tlie Holy City, and even the Temple 
itself, could not save those that forgot the true God and worshipped 
false gods. 

Speaking for God, the prophet declares that the keeping of the 
ceremonial law came after, and was of lesser importance than the 
keeping of the moral law. He warns them of punishment for all 
their wrongdoing; as they sin, so they shall suffer. God will not 
spare Zion now any more than He spared Shiloh in the past. The 
Temple of Jerusalem is no safer than the Temple was at Shiloh, 
if the people go on in idolatry and wickedness. Mingled with 
the many predictions of woe for Jerusalem were tender lamenta- 
tions, for Jeremiah's was a deeply emotional nature, and the ruin 
which he saw coming upon his nation filled him with grief. In chap- 
ter xi. verses i-8, we have a passage which alludes to the finding 
of the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah, and uses in the 
third verse the language of Deuteronomy, chapter xxvii. verse 
26. This passage tells us in verse 6: 'Then the Lord said unto me, 
Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets 
of Jerusalem, saying. Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do 
them.' The meaning of this was that Jeremiah was ordered to 
travel through the cities of Judah, as well as the streets of Jerusa- 
lem, in order to set forth the teaching of Deuteronomy, and to 
urge men to put it into practice. 

This passage gives us an interesting glimpse into Jeremiah's activi- 
ties. Another interesting glimpse into Jeremiah's life shows the 
difficulties which beset his steps, even at this period of his ministry. 
After the lessons from the Potter, which we find in chapter xviii., 
showing God's absolute power over the nations, Jeremiah was com- 
manded to take a potter's earthen vessel and break it in the valley 
of Hinnom, by this symbolic act showing the judgment which was 
to fall on Judah and Jerusalem. After he had repeated in the 
Temple the substance of the prophecy, Pashur, the son of Immer the 
priest, who was chief governor of the Temple, smote him and put 
him in the stocks until the next day; whereupon the prophet, im- 
mediately after his release, pronounced the Lord's formal sentence 
of destruction on Jerusalem, that all its inhabitants should be taken 
away captive by the king of Babylon, and that Pashur and all his 
friends should die and be buried in Babylon. 

We know more from the thirty-sixth chapter concerning the 
way in which the prophecies of Jeremiah took a written form than 
we do concerning the book of any other prophet. By the com- 
mand of God, Jeremiah, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim, was 
ordered to write upon a roll of a book the words which God 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 205 

had spoken 'against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the 
nations' (verse 2). Jeremiah dictated the prophecies to his attend- 
ant, Baruch, who wrote them down from his mouth. He sent 
Baruch to the House of the Lord upon the fasting day, to read the 
words that he had written. Baruch read the roll of the prophecies 
'in the higher court, at the entry of the new gate of the Lord's 
house, in the ears of all the people' (Jeremiah xxxvi. 10). This 
was in the ninth month, i.e., December, of the next year following 
the beginning of the writing. 

King Jehoiakim, hearing from his princes what Baruch had 
been doing, ordered the roll to be brought to him. It was read 
to the king and his princes in the winter-house. After three or 
four leaves had been read, the king cut the roll with his penknife, 
and cast it into the charcoal fire in the brazier. After the burn- 
ing of the roll, Jeremiah was ordered to write another roll. Jere- 
miah xxxvi. verse 29: 'And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of 
Judah, Thus said the Lord ; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, 
Why hast thou written therein, saying. The king of Babylon shall 
certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from 
thence man and beast? Therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim 
king of Judah ; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David : 
and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in 
the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed and 
his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and 
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, 
all the evil that I have pronounced against them ; but the}^ heark- 
ened not. Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Barach 
the scribe, the son of Neriah ; vv'ho wrote therein from the mouth 
of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of 
Judah had burned in the fire : and there were added besides unto 
them many like words.' 

The message of the Lord, that the king of Babylon was to come 
and destroy the land of Judah, brings us to the chief external fact 
which influenced the ministry, and cast its shadow across the 
pages of the prophet. That fact was the growth of the Babylon 
into the great world-power in Western Asia. What Nineveh had 
been in the days of Isaiah, Babylon was in the days of Jeremiah. 
Just as Isaiah had had to fight against an Egyptian party at Jeru- 
salem, which sought to enlist the help of Egypt against Assyria, so 
Jeremiah had to use all his powers to oppose the intrigues of a sim- 
ilar party, who wished for vassalage under the Egyptian king 
rather than a tributary position under the Chaldseans. 

It was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the same year in which 



2o6 'ALL HAIL' 

Jeremiah dictated the roll to Baruch, that Nebuchadnezzar com- 
pletely broke the Egyptian power by his victory over Pharaoh Necho 
at Carchemish. Jeremiah at once perceived the whole significance 
of the battle, as his ode of rejoicing (forty-sixth chapter) to greet 
the king of Babylon plainly shows. From this time on Jeremiah 
began to teach that safety for Jerusalem lay in accepting the over- 
lordship of Babylon. The intrigues first of one king and then of 
another, to obtain assistance from Egypt against Babylon, led di- 
rectly to the first captivity in the reign of Jehoiachin. 

The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was appointed by Nebuchad- 
nezzar, and took a solemn oath of allegiance to the Babylonian king. 
In the ninth year of his reign, however, Zedekiah, too weak to 
resist the pressure of the Jewish princes who advocated resistance 
against Babylon, entangled himself in a treasonable alliance with 
the king of Egypt, and this was followed by the second seige of 
Jerusalem. During this siege, Jeremiah exerted himself to urge 
submission to the Chaldaeans, and provoked the bitterest persecu- 
tion at the hands of the princes of Judah, who had brought about 
the alliance with Egypt. In the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth 
chapters of his book we have a vivid account by himself of how 
he was arrested when going out into the land of Benjamin, and im- 
prisoned in the house of Jonathan the scribe, which had been made 
the common prison ; how he was released by King Zedekiah, and 
afterwards cast into prison again by the princes, who this time let 
down Jeremiah with cords into a deep cistern, where he sunk in 
the mire ; how he was rescued by Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, one of 
the king's eunuchs, who by the directions of the king took thirty 
men and drew up Jeremiah with cords out of the cistern. After 
the capture of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was very well treated by the 
Chaldaeans, and allowed to take his choice of living in Babylon or 
remaining in Jerusalem. He chose to remain, but was carried 
away captive into Egypt by a body of Jews, who had revolted against 
the rule of Babylon. 

Of Jeremiah's prophecies it may be said that, though full of the 
announcement of woes against the wrong-doers, they do not forget 
Isaiah's doctrine of the remnant. Jeremiah xxiii. 1-4: 'Woe be 
unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture ! 
saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel against 
the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and 
driven them away, and have not visited them : behold, I will visit 
upon you the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. And I will gather 
the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven 
them, and will bring them again to their folds ; and they shall be 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 207 

fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which 
shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, 
neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord.' 

Nor do these prophecies altogether omit the comforting thought 
of the coming of the Messiah, of which the following is perhaps 
the clearest example. Chapter xxiii. 15-18: 'Behold, the days come, 
saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and 
a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and 
justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel 
shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, 
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, behold, the 
days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord 
liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of 
Egypt; but, The Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the 
seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all 
countries whither I had driven them ; and they shall dwell in their 
own land.' 

But undoubtedly the highest point in Jeremiah's inspiration is to 
be found in the prophecy of the New Covenant, which in depth of 
spiritual intuition surpasses not only his other conceptions, but 
all those of the other prophets. Chapter xxxi. 31-34: 'Behold, the 
days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with 
the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not according 
to the covenant that I m.ade with their fathers in the day that 
I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; 
which mxy covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto 
them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will 
make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, 
I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; 
and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall 
teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, 
saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know me, from the least 
of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive 
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.' 

The intensely emotional nature of Jeremiah is accountable for his 
prevailing melancholy, even more than the very trying circum- 
stances in which his lot was cast. He frequently breaks into com- 
plaints and lamentations, and although he tries repeatedly to induce 
his countrymen to repent of their sins and turn to their God, there 
is often a note of despair in his prophecies, as of one who is only 
too certain that his country must soon meet its doom. Jeremiah's 
other characteristics are spirituality, truthfulness, self-sacrifice, and 
fearlessness. With unceasing fortitude, he spent his life battling 



2o8 ' ALL HAIL ' 

against odds which would have filled another with despair. He 
fought a losing battle with unshaken resolution, and his character 
was disciplined by defeat into the likeness of the loftiest humanity. 

To-day we are still able to listen to and benefit by his teaching 
and advice. That which took place in Jeremiah's lifetime still takes 
place in ours to-day, no doubt under somewhat altered conditions. 
People still persist in evil-doing. Finding fault with others, for in- 
stance, is a poor business. What we have to try to learn, whether 
from seeing good or bad around us, is to steer clear of evil ourselves, 
and learn to do good. Here is an opportunity given us to ask 
ourselves how you and I are spending our lives. Let us hope that 
they may be lived to good purpose, through God's grace and mercy. 

Jeremiah was a great prophet, a great religious thinker, and a 
great servant of God. We are not great as he was, but God has 
little servants as well as great ones, and we are God's servants too. 
We can all remember the names of many people who have done 
great things : for instance, General Gordon, who fought and died 
for his country and his God ; and Nelson, who said that England 
expects every man to do his duty, and died doing his. Or, again of 
Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Goethe, who delight the generations as 
they come and go ; of men like Schumann or Beethoven, who 
seem to have listened to the strains of Heaven's music and brought 
these down to earth ; of artists like Giotto, Botticelli, Donatello, who 
stand out like stars in the firmament of the ages. Numbers of such 
great men come and go with their centuries, and .leave deep impres- 
sions on the sands of time, helping upwards the life of mankind by 
their work, by their goodness, by their pureness. 

We would all like to be amongst those who excel; but this is 
not possible. Not all of us are destined to attain to greatness and 
distinction; but all of us are meant to aim at goodness in our 
own allotted places. Each one of us has, individually, received 
God's call to fill that position honourably in which it has pleased 
God to put us. We have no excuse at all. This much is expected 
of us. Nothing less is acceptable to God. We have all been chil- 
dren : we have had a nursery, a schoolroom, a university, and we 
pass into life, and are member sof a society. There are some of us 
who are called upon to work with our brains. There are others 
amongst us called upon to work with all our hearts. Again, 
others are called upon to work with their hands: some work in- 
doors, some work out-of-doors. Nobody has a minute to lose. 
Recall here that important advertisement. 'Lost ! Lost, between 
sunrise and sunset, one golden hour set with sixty diamond min- 
utes. No reward will be given, because it is lost for ever.' Nobody 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 209 

should speak lightly of 'killing' time, which is a kind of gradual 
self-murder. We know not the meaning of life if we can talk 
of time, precious time given to us to make use of profitably, and 
can lightly or cynically speak of 'killing' it. No opportunity wasted 
is ever given us a second time. No regret, no tears, no reproach, 
have the power to bring back a minute over again. Now, from 
our own lives and our little conversation which we have had to- 
gether, we will return to our Bible. 

The secret of Jeremiah's strength was his child-like trust in God. 
Jeremiah regarded himself as a little child in the hands of God. He 
had a very humble opinion of himself. He replied to God when he 
was called to be a prophet, 'Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, 
for I am a child.' We have heard much the same words uttered 
by King Solomon; you may remember them. We see how both 
these great men did not rely on their own strength, but how both 
relied on and asked for the help of God, Who can make the weakest 
strong for good. Pray to be made strong for good. 

Jeremiah had small ground for hope, with his countrymen around 
him, turning a deaf ear to his warnings and entreaties, and unable, 
in their fancied security, to perceive what seemed near at hand to 
one who lived half his life in the future: the shock of the Chal- 
daeans' attack, the fall of God's city and of God's house before Nebu- 
chadnezzar's armies. Yet hope was always with him — what though 
the present was dark, and the future darker — a sad half hopeless 
Hope, like the 'Hope' we know so well in Watts' great picture, that 
forlorn figure in space, seated on the earth-ball, with eyes bandaged, 
dejectedly hanging down her head, playing on the single string 
left to her instrument, still clinging to her hold ; not giving up, still, 
in spite of all difficulties, trusting in the Lord's goodness, who alone 
works all things well, and can turn evil into good. The Lord is 
ever willing to forgive, so long as we come unto Him resolved to sin 
no more. In Jeremiah's time, the judgment upon Israel was also a 
judgment upon all the other nations for their wrong-doing. Egypt, 
the land of the Philistines, Tyre and Sidon, and Arabia alike, were 
to fall by the power of God's instrument of judgment, the Chaldaean 
Empire. 

The Book of Lamentations or Dirges is closely connected with 
the subject-matter of the Book of Jeremiah, with the sufferings and 
sorrows that came upon the people of Judah and Jerusalem, in con- 
sequence of the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldseans in 586 B.C. 
In the Book of Jeremiah we read of the circumstances which led up 
to the capture, and of the capture itself. In the Book of Lamenta- 
tions we read of the feelings of those who had seen the capture and 



210 'ALL HAIL' 

the destruction of the city and the Temple, and who sought to find 
some adequate expression for the catastrophe which oppressed 
them. The Lamentations are the expression of genuine and heart- 
felt grief, such grief as a tender-hearted man like Jeremiah could 
not help feeling for the misfortune of those whom, in spite of all 
their sins, he loved as being his countrymen. Tradition, in both the 
Jewish and Christian Church, ascribes this Book to Jeremiah. In 
the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, of which 
it will be remembered the manuscripts are many centuries older 
than the manuscripts in Hebrew, there is a note prefixed to the 
first chapter: 'And it came to pass after Israel was taken captive 
and Jerusalem made desolate, Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented 
with this Lamentation over Jerusalem.' The contents of the book 
accord with the tradition. Chapters ii. and iv. are fresh and warm 
with the lifelike touches of an eye-witness. 

The book is obviously in its subject-matter a supplement to the 
Book of Jeremiah; the differences between these two of style and 
treatment are accounted for by the differences of subject and purpose. 
Though constructed with the most careful art, these Dirges breathe 
the most moving pathos. They deal with a common theme, but 
each develops a different aspect of it; the first words of each poem 
indicate this. The desolation of Jerusalem is the subject of the first 
words of the first chapter: 'How doth the city sit solitary, that was 
full of people!' 

The subject of the second Dirge is God's judgment on His People. 
'How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in 
his anger . . . .' The third Dirge deals with the nation's com- 
plaint and its consolation: 'I am the man that hath seen affliction 
by the rod of his wrath.' The consolation which the latter part 
of this Dirge develops is based on the thought of God's compassion, 
and the gracious purposes of His Visitation. It ends more hope- 
fully, with a confident appeal to God. In the fourth Dirge, the 
Past and Present of Zion are contrasted. It begins: 'How is the 
gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed!' The con- 
trast between the Past and the Present is dwelt upon touchingly. In 
vain had the people fixed their hopes on Egypt, or on Zedekiah. 
The cup of humiliation shall be passed on to Edom : The punish- 
ment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion' (Lamen- 
tations iv. verse 22). The fifth Dirge is an appeal to God's com- 
passion to consider the affliction of His people and help them. The 
Dirge begins : 'Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us : consider, 
and behold our reproach.' 

In all these five separate poems or dirges the writer speaks in 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 211 

the name of the nation. There are apparent echoes of Ezekiel in 
the poems, but as Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah, and 
must have been his fellow-citizen at Jerusalem, before he was carried 
away captive with Jehoiachin to Babylon, there is nothing astonish- 
ing in this. The burden of these exquisite elegies might be ex- 
pressed in the well-known line of a great English poet, 'But ah! 
the heavy change, now thou art gone,' though the object of their 
lament is, of course, a nation, and not an individual. 

It is pathetic and touching that the Jews in Jerusalem at the pres- 
ent day have their Friday afternoon service every week, standing 
at the foot of the huge wall, which entirely divides and shuts out 
from their view the site of their temple of old. With book in hand, 
they recite the Lamentations, and bewail the loss of their privileges ; 
while they still hope that a better fate may be in store for them' 
sooner or later. 



CHAPTER XV. 

EZEKIEL. 

The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel is the work of a contemporary 
of Jeremiah, by whose writings he was evidently influenced. The 
early part of his life was passed at Jerusalem, where Jeremiah was 
then prophesying. Ezekiel was one of the priests of the Temple, 
and his perfect acquaintance with the ritual, as well as with the 
architecture of the Temple, shows that he must have carried on the 
duties of a priest for a considerable time. He was carried away 
captive to Babylon, with King Jehoiachin and the elite of the nation, 
in the first captivity, 597 B.C., and was placed with a colony of Jews 
at Tel Abib, by the river Chebar, probably a tributary of the Eu- 
phrates, or possibly one of the canals. The Jewish exiles in Baby- 
lonia were not prisoners. They lived their own life as a commun- 
ity, apart from their heathen neighbours, as the Jews of the 
Mellah, themselves originally exiles from Spain, live in a Moorish 
town to-day. Ezekiel was married, and lived in his own house, and 
the elders of the Jewish community used to come and sit with him 
and listen to his words. He received the call to be a prophet in 
the fifth year of King Jehoiachin s' exile, b.c. 592, and his prophetic 
work lasted at any rate twenty-two years, the last date in the book 
being 570 B.C. From his home on the Chebar, Ezekiel watched 
the conduct of the king and people of Jerusalem, gradually draw- 
ing down upon themselves the avenging power of Babylon. The in- 
terest the exiles felt in Jerusalem and its fortunes was intense. They 
were evidently in direct communication, and knew all that was going 
on, and they also knew how the attitude of the king of Judah was 
regarded in Babylon. From the time of his call up to the Siege of 
Jerusalem, 587 B.C., Ezekiel prophesied the approaching destruction 
of the once holy city, a destruction which he ascribed chiefly to 
its idolatry {cf. chapter xvi. verses 20-23). 

It may seem incredible to some of us to-day that idolatry should 
have continued in Israel, in spite of the efforts of the leaders of the 
people as far back as Moses and Elijah, and as late as Isaiah and 
Jeremiah. Wie in England have now no external idolatry of this 
kind. Moloch and Ashtaroth do not influence us; but what about 
Mammon? If Ezekiel were alive to-day he might find in our own 

212 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 213 

midst a growing, if less crude, Mammon-worship, an idolatry more 
subtle, but at least as destructive to the true ideals of national life 
as to the true ideals of personal life. How many now, in all 
classes of society, and especially, as it was at Jerusalem' in the 
times of Ezekiel, in the upper classes, have no regard for the interest 
of the community, but live to grasp everything for themselves, 
making private gain their religion instead of godliness. Example 
filters down from the upper strata of the community to the strata 
beneath, and the widespread example of the practical idolatry of 
Mammon-worship wields a greater power of influence than can be 
neutralised by the most eloquent sermons. Instead of being obso- 
lete, as some suppose, the teachings of the old prophets of Israel 
and Judah, if we would give our mind to realising their meanings, 
are full of freshness and vitality in their application to our moral 
life as a community to-day. 

To return to the Book of Ezekiel. The contents may be divided 
into three sections, dealing with the following subjects: (i) The 
impending Fall and Destruction of Jerusalem ; this includes chap- 
ters i.-xxiv. (2) The prophecies of judgment on foreign nations, 
against Ammon, Moab, Edom', Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt; 
this includes chapters xxv.-xxxii. (3) A picture of the future of 
Israel after its restoration, the Kingdom of God, a new Temple 
and a new people, consisting of chapters xxxiii.-xlviii. 

The news of the Siege of Jerusalem, 587 b.c, and the reception 
of the news of its fall at Babylon, 585 2.3., are the two chief events 
on which the eyes of Ezekiel are fixed. Before the Fall of Jerusa- 
lem", Ezekiel had been extremely severe on the Jewish exiles, though 
admitting that their corruption was far less than that of Zedekiah 
and the people of Jerusalem. But after the great catastrophe the 
prophet dealt more gently with the exiles, feeling that his ideal of 
a new Jerusalem had to be born again in their hearts. The religious 
teaching of Ezekiel, in spite of his elaboration of imagery or al- 
legory, was eminently sane and practical. The doctrine on which 
he put special stress was the freedom and responsibility of each 
separate soul before God, and he showed in the clearest way that 
neither the burden of sin inherited from a man's parents, nor the 
sins of a man's own past, can interfere with the action of God's 
forgiveness and pity towards the penitent sinner. 

This view is worked out with great power in chapter xviii. verses 
1-4: The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying, What 
mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, 
saying. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth 
are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have 



214 'ALL HAIL' 

occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls 
are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is 
mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.' Also verses 19-23: 'Yet 
say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? 
When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath 
kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The 
soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity 
of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: 
the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wicked- 
ness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn 
from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, 
and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall 
not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall 
not be mentioned unto him : in his righteousness that he hath done 
he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should 
die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his 
ways, and live?' 

Perhaps that part of Ezekiel's book which produced the most 
immediate and definite effect is the great ideal set forth in the 
Vision of chapters xl.-xlviii. This is a picture of the Kingdom of 
God in its perfect and final state, as Ezekiel was inspired to see 
it. It is the life of Israel redeemed which he sees in this vision, and 
it is not intended to tell us how Salvation is to be reached, but it 
is intended to show us a vision of Salvation already realised, and a 
people already saved. 

The central idea of the vision is of God dwelling in visible glory 
in His Temple in the midst of His people ; and the practical pur- 
pose was to show the conditions, on the part of God's people, which 
His Presence in their midst involved. The priestly character of 
the ideal of this vision of the new Israel was natural in one who, 
like Ezekiel, was himself a priest, and in the immediate future this 
ideal of life seems to have worked well. Ezekiel occupies himself 
chiefly with ceremonial ; but it must be remembered that it is cere- 
monial intended to express the life and aspirations of a people al- 
ready forgiven and sanctified. The new Temple, and the new Israel 
which arises around it, in the new Jerusalem, were first conceived 
and brought to birth in the mind of Ezekiel, years before the return 
of the first exiles, and a still longer period before the foundations 
of the Temple were laid, or the building carried out under the influ- 
ence of the later prophets, Haggai and 'Zechariah. 

There are a number of other visions in Ezekiel, painted with 
great care, but generally encumbered with detail and over-elaborated 
as compared with the masterly work of Isaiah. The Book of Ezekiel 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 215 

begins with a vision of Jehovah to the prophet. Ezekiel i. 4 and 
26-28: 'And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the 
north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness 
was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, 

out of the midst of the fire And above the firmament 

that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the ap- 
pearance of a sapphire stone : and upon the likeness of the throne 
was the likeness as the appearance of a man abov.e upon it. And I 
saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about 
within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from 
the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the 
appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the ap- 
pearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was 
the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the ap- 
pearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I 
saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.' 

We can only conjecture what appearances in the natural world 
suggested to Ezekiel the intricate details of his elaborate picture. 
The sight of a thunder-cloud breaking out in a storm of lightning 
against the glory of a sunset sky, seems best to satisfy the language. 
The thunder-cloud was regarded as the chariot of Jehovah, as in 
Psalm xviii. verse 10: 'And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly : 
yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.' And Psalm' civ. verses 
3, 4: 'Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who 
maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of 
the wind: who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming 
fire.' 

The details of the vision, the living creatures (i.e,, the cherubim), 
the wheels, the firmament, and the throne, are only symbols to sug- 
gest that which the whole vision is intended to convey — a manifes- 
tation or coming of God. God comes in His chariot of storm-cloud, 
and the cherubim are probably personifications of the storm-cloud, 
as the seraphs are of the lightning, and they are conceived as 
bearing up the Presence of Jehovah on their wings. See also 
Isaiah xix. part of verse i: 'Behold, the Lord rideth upon a swift 
cloud.' Also Psalm xcix. verse i: 'The Lord reigneth ; let the 
people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims ; let the earth be 
moved.' Psalm Ixxx. part of verse i : 'Thou that dwellest between 
the cherubims, shine forth.' The cherubims are thus regarded as 
symbols of Jehovah's presence, and for this reason Solomon set two 
great cherubims within the inner house (i.e., the innermost sanc- 
tuary of the Temple), i Kings vi. verses 23-28. 

The firmament above the cherubims, and the throne above the 



2i6 'ALL HAIL' 

firmament, represent the absolute supremacy of God over heaven 
and over all things. The wheels may possibly have been suggested 
as representing by their whirling the movement of the whirlwind 
and tempest in which God comes. The eyes of which the living 
creatures are full represent life and power. We shall be helped 
to realise the glory of the vision Ezekiel saw, if we have observed 
the beauty and majesty of God's sunsets, and are able to recall 
our impressions while we read Ezekiel's words. As Ezekiel was 
inspired by the sunset sky so was Raphael by the prophet's vision, 
and we have before us a copy of this artist's picture, from the orig- 
inal in the Pitti Palace at Florence. Down in the right-hand cor- 
ner, in blue shade, we see Tel-abib, the town in Mesopotamia, where 
the Israelites were captive. Ezekiel we see represented as lifted up 
into the golden sky. Eagerness is depicted on his face ; he is all 
attention to hear his Lord's voice and to receive his command. It 
is a small picture, but it is a real gem. It sheds its glorious rays 
of light and colour, a veritable revelation, right into one's inner- 
most soul. 

As an example of Ezekiel's ideas, beautiful in itself, but spoilt by 
being worked out in excessive detail, we may take the picture of the 
Foundling Child in the sixteenth chapter, It is a picture of a 
child cast out to die, and taken up by one who passed by and 
adopted and reared to womanhood, and finally married by him' 
who had saved her. Then falling into infidelity towards her hus- 
band, and duly punished as an adulterous wife, and then forgiven by 
him and received again. The cast-out child is, of course, Israel; 
the passer-by who becomes her Saviour and protector, and finally 
her husband, is Jehovah. Her infidelity means her persistent idol- 
atry: her punishment, the judgments which have been sent upon her, 
and her forgiveness and restoration, the forgiveness and restora- 
tion of Israel to God's favour. 

The vision of the valley of dry bones is very fine in conception, and 
much better worked out. The symbolism of this vision teaches 
the great truth that God can put fresh life into the dry bones of any 
nation — as, for example, of the dead nation of Israel — and bring 
the living nation again to their own land. Ezekiel xxxvii. verses 
1-14: 'The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in 
the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley 
which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round 
about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, 
lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these 
bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again 
he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 217 

O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord 
God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into 
you, and ye shall live: and I will lay sinews upon you, and will 
bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath 
in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 
So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there 
was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, 
bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh 
came up upon them, and the skin covered them above : but there 
was no breath in them. Then he said unto me, Prophesy unto the 
wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the 
Lord God ; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded 
me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up 
upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, 
Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, 
they say. Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost : we are cut off 
for our parts. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them. Thus saith 
the Lord God ; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and 
cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the 
land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have 
opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your 
graves, and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live ; and I shall 
place you in your own land : then shall ye know that I the Lord have 
spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.' 

The ideas of the Old Testament have had their influence on the 
New. This is especially the case with Ezekiel, and is nowhere more 
apparent than in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and Ezekiel's 
influence is also noticeable in our Lord's parable of the Lost Sheep 
and in the allegory of the Good Shepherd. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
Daniel, 

The Book of Daniel is divided into two distinct parts. The 
first six chapters, written in the third person, tell the story of Daniel. 
The last six chapters give an account written by himself of his 
visions, and are written in the first person. The book is written 
partly in Aramaic — that is, from the fourth verse of chapter ii., be- 
ginning with the words 'O King,' to the end of chapter vii. The rest 
of the book is written in Hebrew. Daniel was one of the Jewish 
exiles in Babylon who was taken away with other Jews by Nebu- 
chadnezzar (the right name is Nebuchadrezzar) in the third (the 
date is doubtful) year of Jehoiakim. Daniel, with his companions, 
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah — ^better known to us by their 
Chaldsean names of Shadrach, M)eshach, and Abed-nego — were 
taken away from Jerusalem' to be trained, at the king's court in 
Babylon, in the learning of the Chaldaeans, in order that they might 
be capable servants of the king when they were grown up. 

The Prince of the Eunuchs was kindly disposed towards Daniel, 
who resolved that he would not defile himself by eating the strange 
king's meat and by drinking his wine. By his exemplary conduct 
he had won the affection and esteem of the Prince of the Eunuchs, 
and Daniel and his companions obtained consent from the steward 
(Melzar, A.V.), whom the Prince of the Eunuchs had set over 
them', to try a ten-days' experiment of a diet of pulse and water. 
The experiment was a complete success. The four Jews obtained 
leave for the future to eat pulse or herbs and drink water. The 
effect of being teetotalers and vegetarians for God was that these 
boys grew up with good looks, strong bodies, and clear and fine 
minds — an example to the children of our day, who can make the 
same choice with the same results. These exiles attained much 
learning and much wisdom, and Daniel had rare understanding in 
interpreting all visions and dreams. The king, Nebuchadnezzar, 
had them all four brought into his presence, and he communed 
with them, and there was none found like unto them. The king 
had them examined, and in all learning the king found them ten 
times better than any of his own magicians and astrologers. 

Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which troubled him. To find again 
a fugitive dream for the man who had dreamed it and forgotten 

218 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 219 

it was a desperate quest. The king's wise men were set the impos- 
sible task of telling him what the dream was that he had forgotten. 
They asked the king to tell them the dream and they would give 
the interpretation. The king said he had forgotten the dream : 'The 
thing is gone from me;' but he required, nevertheless, that they 
should find the dream and show it him, on pain, if they failed to do 
so, of immediate death. They told him that what he asked was 
beyond the power of .man. No magician or astrologer could do this ; 
no one could do it 'except the gods whose dwelling is not with 
flesh.' The king waxed wrath. A decree went forth that all the 
wise men of Babylon were to be slain. Daniel, with his three 
friends, was included amongst the number. 'And they sought Dan- 
iel and his fellows to be slain.' They met together, and Daniel 
desired of the king that he would give him' time, and he would 
show the king the meaning, and the interpretation. The Lord 
granted the prayer of Daniel and his three companions. The 
secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision, and Daniel blessed 
and thanked and praised God. 'And he (God) changeth the times 
and the seasons : he removeth kings, and setteth up kings : he giveth 
wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know under- 
standing : he revealeth the deep and secret things : he knoweth what 
is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him' (Daniel ii. verses 
21, 22). 

Thus Daniel prayed and thanked the Lord God of his fathers. 
Strengthened by prayer, he went to the king. Daniel explained that 
he took no credit to himself for knowing more than the other wise 
men of Babylon. He pointed out that he was but an instrument of 
God, chosen to work for Him ; that the Lord had merely made him 
His mouthpiece. Daniel then went on to discover the lost dream, 
which was the difficult thing: to interpret it when discovered being 
comparatively easy. By this wonderful revealing of that secret 
thing, the lost dream, the heathen king was obliged to acknowledge 
that the God of Daniel was indeed the One and Only Real God; a 
God of gods, and a Lord of kings. Daniel was richly rewarded 
by the king.- He became ruler of all the wise men in Babylon, and 
the chief of the eunuchs of the whole province of Babylon. History 
repeats itself. Joseph in Egypt had had similar distinction be- 
stowed upon him. At Daniel's request, his three companions, Sha- 
drach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, were set by the king over the 
affairs of the province of Babylon. 

Now, in spite of Nebuchadnezzar having acknowledged the Lord 
of Daniel as supreme, he had not the singleness of heart to walk 
in the Lord's ways. He sinned very grievously. He ordered a 



220 'ALL HAIL' 

golden image to be made. This he ordered to be set up where the 
mounds of Dura are seen to-day. A herald announced the king's 
decision. Daniel iii. verses 4-6 :'.... To you it is com- 
manded, O people, nations, and languages, that at what time ye 
hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, 
and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image 
that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: and whoso falleth not 
down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst 
of a burning fiery furnace.' 

Every one obeyed except Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, 
the three companions of Daniel, who was himself apparently absent 
at this time. This failure of theirs to obey his order was reported 
by certain Chaldaeans to the ears of the king. He had the three 
Jews brought before him, and asked them if they did really refuse 
to worship the golden image which he had set up. He offered them 
a last chance, that if, when the signal was given by the music, they 
fell down and worshipped the image which he had made, all would 
be well ; whereas, if they refused, they would be cast into the midst 
of the burning fiery furnace. 

Chapter iii. verses 16-20: 'Shadrach, Meshach^ and Abed-nego, 
answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not care- 
ful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we 
serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he 
will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known 
unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the 
golden image which thou hast set up. Then was Nebuchadnezzar 
full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: therefore he spake, and com- 
manded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more 
than it was wont to be heated. And he commanded the most mighty 
men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- 
nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.' 

This was done, and the heat of the furnace was so great that it 
slew the mighty men who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego 
into the midst of the flames. Then Nebuchadnezzar saw a sight 
which astonished him. Chapter iii. verses 24, 25 : 'Then Nebuchad- 
nezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and 
said unto his counsellors. Did not we cast three men bound into the 
midst of the fire? They answered, and said unto the king. True, O 
King. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking 
in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of 
the fourth is like the Son of God' (a son of the gods. — R.V.) 

Then the king spoke to the three men whom he had cast into the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 221 

fire, and called them to come forth from the furnace, and they came 
forth, and all who were there saw that the fire had no power on 
them; not a hair of their heads was singed, nor was there the smell 
of fire upon them. Nebuchadnezzar was completely convinced by 
this miraculous deliverance. He blessed the God of Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abed-nego, whose grand fidelity had been thus re- 
warded, and he made a decree, sentencing to death any one who 
blasphemed against the God of these three devoted Jews, whom 
he promoted to a high place in the province of Babylon. This story 
has its practical application to ourselves. It teaches us the wisdom, 
as well as the worthiness, of being true to God at any cost. We 
all are placed in the burning fiery furnace, exposed to its blasting 
breath, the furnace of the temptations of the world. If we hold 
firm to our faith in God, and do His will at any cost, He will 
bring us safely through. Nothing is too hard for Him to accom- 
plish. When deliverance seems to our eyes impossible. He will bring 
it to pass. 

In the fourth chapter of Daniel, we have an account of an edict 
of Nebuchadnezzar, which declares the wonders that the God of 
Israel had wrought upon him, and his own faith in Him (verse 
3): 'How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders! 
his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from 
generation to generation.' 

The cause of the faith in God which Nebuchadnezzar expressed 
in the edict is explained as follows : Nebuchadnezzar had had a 
dream that troubled him exceedingly. Neither his magicians, nor 
his astrologers, nor his soothsayers, nor his wise men could explain 
it. So he sent for Daniel, the master of the magicians, as he called 
him. This was the dream (chapter iv. verses 10-16) :'.... I 
saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height 
thereof was great. The tree grew, and was strong, and the height 
thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all 
the earth : the leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, 
and in it was meat for all : the beasts of the field had shadow under 
it. and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all 
flesh was fed of it. I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, 
and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; 
he cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his 
branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit : let the beasts 
get away from under it, and fowls from his branches : nevertheless 
leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron 
and brass, in the tender grass of the field ; and let it be wet with 
the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the 



222 'ALL HAIL' 

grass of the earth: let his heart be changed from man's, and let a 
beast's heart be given imto him ; and let seven times pass over him.' 

Daniel explained that the tree represented King Nebuchadnezzar 
himself in his greatness and glory (chapter iv. verses 24-33) : This 
is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most 
High, which is come upon my lord the king: That they shall drive 
thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the 
field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall 
wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over 
thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of 
men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. And whereas they com- 
manded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be 
sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens 
do rule. Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, 
and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by 
shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tran- 
quillity. All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar. At the end 
of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. 
The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have 
built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and 
for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king's 
mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnez- 
zar, to thee it is spoken ; The kingdom is departed from thee. 
. . . . The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchad- 
nezzar: and he was driven from m.en, and did eat grass as oxen, 
and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were 
grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.' 

This story teaches us two truths: the guilt of pride in the sight 
of God, and the reality of the rule that God exercises over the 
greatest kings of the earth. Nebuchadnezzar learned the lesson, and 
published the fact in the last words of his edict (verse Z7) • 'Now I 
Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, 
all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that 
walk in pride he is able to abase.' At the end of the time predicted, 
his understanding returned to the king, and he praised and blessed 
God for His mercies, and he was established in his kingdom; and 
'excellent majesty was added' to him. 

In the fifth chapter we have the story of Belshazzar's feast. Bel- 
shazzar, the king of Babylon, made a great feast in the palace, to 
a thousand of his lords, and when he had drunk wine, he ordered 
them to bring the vessels which had been taken away from the 
Temple at Jerusalem, and they drank from the sacred vessels, the 
king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 223 

While they were impiously drinking wine from these golden cups, 
these heavy drinkers were suddenly appalled by a sight which met 
their eyes. 'Fingers of a man's hand came forth, and wrote over 
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's 
palace' (chapter v. verse 5). Then the king was filled with terror, 
and his knees smote one against another. He sent for the wise 
men of Babylon, and offered the reward of a robe of scarlet, and 
a chain of gold, and the third place as ruler in the kingdom, to the 
man who would read the writing and interpret it. All the king's 
wise men came, and none could read the writing. At last the 
queen proposed to the king to send for Daniel, who, in the time 
of Nebuchadnezzar, had been master of the wise men. Daniel was 
brought to the king. The king repeated his offer to Daniel, whom, 
it is evident, he had never met before, from his opening words, 
verse 13: 'Art thou that Daniel .... whom the king my 
father brought out of Jewry?' Daniel somewhat sternly rebuked 
Belshazzar for lifting himself up against the Lord of heaven, drink- 
ing from the vessels of His house, and praising his idol gods, and 
he finished his rebuke by giving the interpretation of the mysterious 
writing. Chapter v. verses 25-28: 'And this is the writing that was 
written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the in- 
terpretation of the thing : MENE ; God hath numbered thy kingdom, 
and finished it. TEKEL; Thou are weighed in the balances, and 
art found wanting. PERES ; Thy kingdom is divided, and given 
to the Medes and Persians.' Verses 30, 31 relate the execution of 
the sentence : 'In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chal- 
deans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about 
threescore and two years old.' 

An account of the festivities at the time of the fall of Babylon is 
given in Herodotus i. 193 ; the identification of Belshazzar is diffi- 
cult and doubtful. Some think that he is the Labynetus of Hero- 
dotus. The name of Darius in this place is no less difficult to ac- 
count for. Possibly the stories are not literal history, but edifying 
narratives based on facts. With the sixth chapter we come to the 
last of the stories which make up the narrative portion of the Book 
of Daniel. King Darius promoted Daniel to be one of the three 
presidents appointed to be over the one hundred and ten satraps, to 
whom he confided the government of the kingdom. This naturally 
produced the intensest jealousy of Daniel in the other presidents 
and satraps, who were Persians or Medes. They sought an op- 
portunity to lay an accusation against Daniel, but found none. They 
then laid a plot, and persuaded the king to make a decree that for- 
bad, on pain of death, any one to ask any petition of God or man 



224 ' ALL HAIL ' 

for thirty days, except of the king. The king, having signed the 
writing, it was impossible to revoke it, 'according to the law of the 
Medes and Persians, which altereth not' (verse 8). 

Qiapter vi. lo, ii: 'Now when Daniel knew that the writing was 
signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his 
chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times 
a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did afore- 
time. Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and 
making supplication before his God.' The conspirators then went 
to the king, and asked him whether he had signed this decree. He 
said that he had, and they then accused Daniel of disregarding 
the decree.. 

Verse 14: Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore 
displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him; 
and he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him.' 
But Daniel's enemies came to the king again, and pressed him to 
carry out the decree. The decree provided that he who disregarded 
it should be cast into the den of lions. The king at last yielded 
reluctantly to the inexorable law, and Daniel was cast into the den. 
The king called after him with a last faint hope that his God would 
deliver him. Then the stone was brought and laid upon the mouth 
of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and the signet 
of his lords. The king passed the night in his palace fasting and 
sleepless, grieving for Daniel. 

Chapter vi. 19-23 : Then the king arose very early in the morning, 
and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he came to the 
den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king 
spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy 
God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the 
lions? Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My 
God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they 
have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found 
in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Then 
was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they 
should taken Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up 
out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because 
he believed in his God.' 

The king then punished Daniel's accusers by doing to them what 
they had forced him to do to Daniel. They were thrown into the 
lions' den, with their children and families, for in the East at 
that time, if the family of a criminal had been spared, the criminal 
would not have been considered to have been fully punished, his 
family being regarded as part of a man. 



' SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 225 

We now enter on the second part of the Book, consisting of the 
series of visions seen by Daniel. These visions are largely occupied 
with great political changes in the world — ^the rise and fall of 
kingdoms, and a sequence of events in history which need not de- 
tain us long. Chapter vii. records a vision which Daniel had in the 
first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon. The vision was of four 
great beasts that came up from the sea: a lion with eagle's wings; 
a bear; a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a fowl, 
and four heads; and a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and 
strong exceedingly. It devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped 
what remained with its feet; and it had ten horns, among which 
there came up an eleventh little horn, three of the horns were 
plucked up by the roots before it, for this little horn had eyes like 
the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. 

There are various interpretations of this part of the vision. One 
makes the horns to be European kingdoms, into which the Roman 
Empire divided. The little horn is an anti-Christian power, which 
is to arise out of them, in the future. By the other interpretation, 
now very largely accepted, the ten horns are taken to be the suc- 
cessors of Alexander the Great, the little horn Antiochus Epip- 
hanes, the persecutor of the Jews at the time of the Maccabees. 
The chief point in this vision, however, is the advent of the Mes- 
sianic kingdom, which immediately follows. Chapter vii. 13, 14: 
I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man 
came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, 
and they brought him near before him'. And there was given him 
dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and 
languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting domin- 
ion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall 
not be destroyed.' 

Of these words, the 'Ancient of days' clearly represents God the 
Father. 'One like the Son of man,' who comes with the clouds of 
heaven, has been always held to be the Messiah. This is firstly the 
Jewish, and secondly the Christian, interpretation. And this view 
is for Christians made decisive by the application of those words by 
our Lord to Himself. 

Matthew xxvi. 64: 'Jesus saith unto him. Thou hast said: never- 
theless I say unto you. Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting 
on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' 

Mark xiv. 62: 'And Jesus said, .... and ye shall see the 
Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven.' 



226 'ALL HAIL' 

Mark xiii. 2(}\ 'And then shall they see the Son of man coming 
in the clouds with great power and glory/ 

Luke xxi. 27 : 'And then shall they see the Son of man coming in 
a cloud with power and great glory.' 

There are many more passages to the same effect, and Christ 
called Himself, and is repeatedly called in the New Testament, 'the 
Son of man/ This passage, be it remembered, was the very centre 
of the Jewish Messianic Hope, long before the Birth of Christ, and 
long before the time of His Ministry, and it was unmistakably taken 
by our Lord as spoken of Himself. On no other explanation than 
the Christian explanation can any adequate meaning or adequate 
fulfilment of this prophecy be pointed out. 

Of the vision in chapter viii. it will be enough to say that it be- 
longed to the third year of Gelshazzar, and the meaning of the vi- 
sion may be explained thus (we must ask our readers to read for 
themselves chapter viii. verses 3-12). The explanation is given by 
the angel Gabriel to Daniel, and is to be found in verses 20 to 25. 
To work out a slight sketch of Gabriel's explanation, the ram is 
the empire of the Medes and Persians ; the he-goat is the empire 
of the Greeks. The 'great horn' is the first King Alexan- 
der ; the four horns which stand up after the great horn is broken are 
the four kingdoms which grew out of Alexander's empire after his. 
death> i.e^; Antioch^ Egypt, Thrace, Macedonia. The king repre- 
sented by the little horn is probably Antiochus Epiphanes. The 
tenth to twelfth chapters contain a vision of Daniel, in the third 
year of Cyrus, king of Persia, by the river Tigris, here called the 
Hiddekel. Daniel had fasted for three full weeks when an angel 
came to him (chapter x. 6). 'His body also was like the beryl, and 
his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of 
fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and 
the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.' Daniel fell to 
the ground in a deep sleep. The angel raised him up (verses 11- 
13) : 'And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, un- 
derstand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for 
unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto 
me, I stood trembling. Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel : 
for from' the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, 
and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and 
I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia 
withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the 
chief princes, came to help me: and I remained there with the kings 
of Persia.' The 'Prince' of Persia is the guardian angel of that 
country: Michael is the guardian angel of the Jews. The angel 



. SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE . 227 

describes the future in chapters xi. and xii. Here he describes the 
reigns of four Persian kings, and of Alexander the Great, and the 
breaking up of his kingdom after his death. Then the conflicts be- 
tween the kings of the north, i.e., the kings of Antioch, and be- 
tween the kings of the soiith, i.e., of Egypt. And lastly, and some- 
what fully, the history of Antiochus Epiphanes and his efforts to sup- 
press the Jewish religion (see chapter xi. verses '30-39). Verse 31 
says: 'Arid arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the 
sanctuary of strength, and shall take way the daily sacrifice, and 
they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.' " This ap- 
parently refers to the defilment of the sanctuary of the Jews by 
Antiochus Epiphanes, and his attempt to suppress their religion and 
substitute for it his own heathen religion. This verse was referred 
to by our Lord, and the reference is to be found in St. Matthew 
xxiv. verse 15: *When ye therefore shall seie the abomination of 
desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy 
place .....' 

Lastly, the angel described to Daniel the deliverance of the Jews, 
he resurrection of the dead, the reward of the righteous. The 
Book of Daniel, with its predictions of the Messiah and the Mes- 
sianic age, with its warmth of religious feeling and its unfaltering 
fidelity to God, did much to prepare the minds of pious Jews for 
the coming of the true Messiah. The' spirit of the Book of Daniel 
resembles closely thai of the writings of the older prophets. Its 
inspiration is essentially one with theirs. Its vision of the Messianic 
future is not less clear, though the details of the picture it repre- 
sents are different. As a prophet, Daniel not merely foretells his- 
tory but interprets it. The book deals with the empires of tlie world 
on a large scale, and shows that the course of the empires of the 
empires of th^ world is ordained by God, arid that the history of the 
world is gradually carrying out the Divine purpose. Finally, the 
Book of Daniel stands as an inspiring force behind the last book of 
the Bible, the Book of the Revelation of St, John the Divine. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

HosEA: — Joel — Amos — ^Jonah — Micah — Nahum — 
Habakkuk — Zephaniah — Haggai — Zechariah — Malachi. 

We have considered the Greater Prophets. We now turn to the 
Lesser Prophets. They are twelve in number, and though they 
are commonly called the Minor Prophets, their prophecies are many 
of them distinguished by deep spirituality and intense devotion to 
the moral law, and are often remarkably suited to the circumstances 
of our own time. They contain, moreover, passages of noble poetry, 
such as the great third chapter of the Prophet Habakkuk, which 
is one of the finest lyrical odes in Hebrew literature. 

We shall take these prophets in their order in our English Bible, 
which is not always the order in which they lived. We begin 
then with Hosea. 

Hosea prophesied during the latter part of the reign of King 
Jeroboam the Second of Israel, and in the reigns of his successors. 
Remarkably high and pure was Hosea's conception of the tender 
and forgiving love of Jehovah for Israel, learned, no doubt, from his 
own experience. When he called upon Israel to repent, he made 
his appeal on the ground of the proofs of Jehovah's love, to which 
Israel's history bore witness, for example, chapter xi. verses 1-4: 
'When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out 

of Egypt I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them 

by their arms ; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them 
with cords of a man, with bands of love : and I was to them as they 
take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.' 

Jeroboam II., the king of Israel when Hosea began his prophetic 
ministry, was the most powerful and prosperous monarch of Jehu's 
dynasty. Hosea's ministry belonged to the days of Uzziah, Jotham, 
Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. The date approximately is 
from 746 B.C. to 735 or 734 B.C. The condition of the northern king- 
dom shortly before was morally at its worst. The prosperity of 
Jeroboam's long reign had issued in the luxury which commonly 
follows the growth of wealth; in selfishness which grows out of 
luxury; in oppression of the poor by the rich; and in a widespread 
idolatry and an open disregard of the moral law. 

The successor to Jeroboam, Zachariah, was murdered after a 

228 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 229 

reign of a few months. A time of anarchy followed, to which Hosea 
refers in chapters vii. and viii. Ephemeral kings succeeded each 
other, supported aUernately by Egypt and Assyria, and so in a few 
3 ears' time we come to Pekah, whom we have already read of in 
Isaiah as allied with Rezin of Damascus in an attempt to conquer 
King Ahaz, and set up a usurper in Jerusalem. Pekah was suc- 
ceeded by King Hosea, aided in his usurpation by the Assyrian king. 
Nevertheless he allied himself with Egypt against Assyria, and 
Samaria was besieged by Shalmaneser, and after a siege of three 
years, taken by Sargon, and the people of the northern kingdom' 
(the ten tribes) carried away into captivity into Assyria. 

Hosea was directed to marry a bad woman named Gomer, prob- 
ably for more than one purpose. He had to seek to reform her by 
kindness and forgiveness, and in so doing his own character was 
to receive a necessary discipline for his high office of prophet, or 
speaker for God. He was intended to learn by practical experience 
the natural love of Jehovah towards unfaithful and erring Israel. 
He was told to call the children born of this strange union by 
symbolical names. And the symbolism of his own unfaithful and 
ungrateful wife represented Ephraim's ingratitude and infidelity in 
leaving Jehovah for Baal. After a period of punishment, Ephraim 
was to be restored, and receive the forgiveness of the Divine Hus- 
band. 

This stress laid upon the forgiving love of Jehovah to Israel is 
Hosea's special distinction, and he turns to it again and again, 
even from his severest denunciations. Hosea is the prophet of the 
Decline and Fall of Israel. What his elder contemporary, Amos, 
saw from afar, Hosea saw close at hand : the destruction that was 
hastening upon the demoralised kingdom — demoralised not only by 
direct idolatry, but also by the calf or bull worship of Jehovah at 
Bethel. Hosea's prophecies have a tenderness of deep emotion 
which is peculiarly his own. As specimens of his writings we may 
quote chapter vi. 1-6: 'Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for 
he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will 
bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day 
he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we 
know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is pre- 
pared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as 
the latter and former rain unto the earth. O Ephriam, what shall 
I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your 
goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth 
away. Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain 
them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the 



230 'ALL HAIL' 

light that goeth forth. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and 
the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.' 

And chapter xiv. : 'O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God ; for 
thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn 
to the Lord: say unto him', Take away all iniquity, and receive us 
graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall 
not save us ; we will not ride upon horses : neither will we say any 
more to the work of our hands. Ye are our gods: for in thee the 
fatherless findeth mercy. I will heal their backsliding, I will love 
them freely : for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be 
as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth 
his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty 
shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that 
dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, 
and grow as the vine : the scent thereof shall be as the wine of 
Lebanon. Ephraim shall say. What have I to do any more with 
idols? I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir 
tree. From' me is thy fruit found. Who is wise, and he shall un- 
derstand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the 
ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but 
the transgressors shall fall therein.' 

Joel, who lived and prophesied at Jerusalem, follows H'osea in 
the order of the arrangement of our Old Testament. The date of 
the prophecy has to be determined by internal evidence, which points 
to a date after the Exile, perhaps about 500 b.c. ; for example, the 
reference to the trade with Greece in Jewish slaves mentioned in 
Joel iii. 6 points to as late or even a later date. Supporters of an 
earlier date, however, rely on chapter iii. 1-6 as referring to the 
taking of Jerusalem in the reign of Jehoram, and find in the simple 
teaching of the book support for fixing its date in the early part of 
the reign of King Joash, then in his boyhood, and under the guid- 
ance of Jehoiada. Either date has some support from' internal 
evidence, but whichever is adopted the spiritual teaching of the 
book retains its high value. Its theme is God's judgment, and may 
be expressed in the words of Abraham, pleading for mercy before 
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, 'Shall not the judge of all 
the earth do right?' 

Of Joel we know nothing, except that his father's name was Peth- 
uel. The occasion of the prophecy was a plague of locusts, and a 
drought, which caused great famine and distress (this visitation is 
very vividly described), and it symbolised to the Prophet the day of 
Jehovah; a visitation in, judgment, which possibly a full repentance 
might avert. Repentance seems to have taken place, for from the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 231 

second chapter we have a full description of God's gracious change 
of treatment which that repentance had made possible. The visi- 
tation in judgment thus spared to the people is to fall upon their 
enemies. Chapter iii. 12-16: 'Let the heathen be wakened, and come 
up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the 
heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: 
come, get you down ; for the press is full, the fats overflow ; for their 
wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of deci- 
sion : for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The 
sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw 
their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his 
voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: 
but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the 
children of Israel.' 

The name of Jehoshaphat has a meaning, namely, Jehovah hath 
judged or judges. The valley of decision means the valley of judg- 
ment. Joel realises at an earlier date than the author of Jonah 
that the Creator cares for His creatures, and that humanity ought 
to follow his example. This is the meaning of Joel i. verse 20: 
The beasts of the field cry also unto thee.' As a specimen of his 
prophecy we may take chapter ii. verse 12 : 'Therefore also now, saith 
the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, 
and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and 
not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God : for he is 
gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and 
repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth if he will return and 
repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and 
a drink offering unto the Lord your God? Blow the trumphet in 
Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly : gather the people, sanc- 
tify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and 
those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his 
chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the 
ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and 
let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage 
to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them : wherefore 
should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will 
the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people. Yea, the Lord 
will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, 
and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith: and I will 
no more make you a reproach among the heathen: but I will re- 
move far off from you the northern army, and will drive him 
into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, 
and his hinder part toward the utmost sea; and his stink shall 



232 'ALL HAIL' 

come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done 
great things. Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord 
will do great things. Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the 
pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her 
fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad 
then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for 
he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause 
to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter 
rain in the first month. And the floors shall be full of wheat, 
and the fats shall oveflow with wine and oil. And I will restore 
to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm and 
the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army which I sent 
among you. And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise 
the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with 
you : and my people shall never be ashamed. And ye shall know 
that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, 
and none else : and my people shall never be ashamed. And it shall 
come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; 
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men 
shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions : and also 
upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I 
pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and 
in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall 
be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great 
and terrible day of the Lord com_e. And it shall come to pass, 
that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered : 
for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the 
Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.' 

A portion of this passage was quoted by St. Peter, in his sermon 
recorded in Acts ii. verses 16-21, and a comparison of the original 
passage, with St. Peter's use of it, will give us an example of the 
fact that the same spirit moves through both Testaments, and in- 
spired the old Jewish Prophet as well as the Apostle of Christ. 

The next prophet to claim our attention is Amos. He is the 
earliest of those prophets whose writings we possess, and whose 
date we know. He was an elder contemporary of Hosea, and the 
writings of the two prophets give a clear idea both of religious and 
moral life at that period in the northern kingdom. He prophesied 
in the eighth century before the Birth of Christ. Uzziah was 
king in Judah, Jeroboam the Second was king in Israel, and it was 
a period of great peace and prosperity in both kingdoms, especially 
in Israel. Jeroboam the Second had carried on the expansion of 
his territory till it almost equalled the extent of David's kingdom 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 233 

at its largest. It was a time of great wealth and luxury and of 
general self-satisfaction in both kingdoms, and, as usual, when 
there is extreme luxury in the upper classes there was extreme pov- 
erty in the lower, and in spite of regular services and magnificent 
ceremonial there was a widespread reign of godlessness, showing 
itself especially in a growing contempt of the moral law. It was 
at this time that Amos appeared at Bethel, the chief sanctuary of 
the popular worship of Jehovah under the form of a bull, and an- 
nounced the judgment that was rapidly approaching. Amos vii. 
verses 10-16: 'Then Amaziah the priest of Eeth-el sent to Jeroboam 
king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the 
midst of the house of Israel : the land is not able to bear all his 
words. For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and 
Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land. Also 
Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the 
land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy* there : but prophesy 
not again any more at Beth-el: for it is the king's chapel, and 
it is the king's court. Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I 
was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son : but I was an herd- 
man, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And the Lord took me 
as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me. Go, prophesy 
unto my people Israel.' 

Amos, we learn from this passage, belonged to Tekoa, where he 
was a shepherd, and had received the call of the Lord to go and 
prophesy at the king's chapel at Bethel, which was to Israel the 
religious centre that the Temple at Jerusalem was to Judah, Amos 
continued his ministry in the northern kingdom in spite of the op- 
position of the priests and rulers. He declared fearlessly that all 
the wealth of Israel and all the conquests of King Jeroboam would 
not save them from the coming judgment, nor would all their 
burnt-offerings win them acceptance with God; but for their evil 
doings they would be carried into captivity beyond Damascus. A 
clear and striking prophecy, many years before Assyria came on 
the scene, of the invasion by Shalmaneser, and the carrying into 
captivity by Sargon, which finally extinguished the northern king- 
dom and the ten tribes. 

The prophecies of the Book of Amos are not only valuable as 
throwing a light on the moral decay of wealthy and ambitious Israel 
in the reign of Jeroboam the Second, but also as throwing a light 
on the problems of our own time in our own country. The wor- 
ship of Jehovah at Bethel went on very regularly with magnificent 
ritual, but it is evident that the people regarded it as a matter 
for the priests alone, and the warnings of the moral law as a 



234 'ALL HAIL' 

mere form' of empty words. Amos and H'osea both saw the decay 
of national character which was going on unnoticed under the 
splendid cloak of unexampled national prosperity. A nation which 
had practically forgotten God had lost the power which alone can 
bind a community together: the power of a common religion which 
issues in a common life. The nation of Israel had still the warn- 
ing voice of the prophets among them, but soon the time of warn- 
ing would be over, and the time of judgment would be come. 
Amos viii. ii : 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will 
send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for 
water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.' 

There is a considerable resemblance between the time of Amos 
and our own time. In England, as in Israel, prosperity is unex- 
ampled, and national wealth advances by leaps and bounds. Our 
territory, like theirs, was never greater. The services of religion 
are as well maintained in England as they were in Israel, but the 
religious census reveals in us something of the godlessness from 
which Israel suffered. The growth of vast fortunes in the hands 
of the few, and the public opinion which tends more and more to 
regard the possession of money as the supreme object and the 
chief distinction and chief aim in life, together with the growth of 
extreme poverty in the many, as an accompaniment or result of the 
growth of extreme wealth in the few, are signs that may be inter- 
preted to mean that we need the voice of an Amos to awaken the 
nation from its slumber of self-complacency. God's unchanging 
laws are the same now as when Amos delivered his message, and 
the disregard of those laws will produce the same national results 
now as then. 

In his prophecies Amos has left us many examples of the dignity 
and strength of a great simplicity, illuminated with a great self-for- 
getful purpose. This is a fine climax, which shows his easy power 
of expression (chapter iii. 3-8) : 'Can two walk together, except 
they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no 
prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken noth- 
ing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is 
for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken 
nothing at all? Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the 
people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord 
hath not done it? Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he 
revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath 
roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but 
prophesy?' Again, a fine passage begins thus (chapter v. 7-12) : 
'Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 235 

in the earth, seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and 
turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day 
dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth 
them out upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name: that 
strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall 
come against the fortress. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, 
and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. Forasmuch there- 
fore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him 
burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall 
not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye 
shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgres- 
sions and your mighty sins : they afflict the just, they take a bribe, 
and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.' 

To this may be added also chapter ix. 1-6: T saw the Lord 
standing upon the altar : and he said. Smite the lintel of the door, 
that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; 
and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of 
them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be 
delivered. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take 
them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them 
down : and though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will 
search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my 
sight in the bottom' of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, 
and he shall bite them : and though they gO' into captivity before 
their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay 
them : and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for 
good. And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, 
and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn : and it shall 
rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as by the flood 
of Egypt. It is he that buildeth his stories (R.V. chambers) in 
the heaven, and hath founded his troop (R.V. vault) in the earth; 
he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out 
upon the face of the earth : the Lord is his name.' 

The subject of the prophecy of Obadiah is the impending ruin of 
Edom. It is the shortest book of the prophets, consisting of only 
twenty-one verses. The cause of Obadiah's declaration of God's 
wrath against Edom is the wrong that Edom had done to Jerusalem 
in the day of its calamity. The nature of Edom's wickedness is 
plainly indicated in verses 11-14: 'In the day that thou stoodest on 
the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive 
his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon 
Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them. But thou shouldest not 
have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became 



236 'ALL HAIL' 

a stranger; neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children 
of Judah in the day of their destruction ; neither shouldest thou have 
spoken proudly in the day of distress. Thou shouldest not have 
entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity ; yea, 
thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their 
calamity, nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their 
calamity; neither shouldest thou have stood in the crossway, to cut 
ofT those of his that did escape; neither shouldest thou have deliv- 
ered up those of his that did remain in the day of distress/ 

And for these a day of the Lord, a day of retribution, is pro- 
phesied. The date of Obadiah can only be conjectured from' in- 
ternal evidence, as nothing is known of the prophet himself. The 
verses we have quoted point quite naturally to the destruction of 
Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans in 586 b.c., and to the way the Edom- 
ites rejoiced at the defeat of the Jews, and helped the Chaldaeans to 
cut off the flyers. A comparison of Jeremiah (chapter Ixix. verses 
7-22) with Obadiah reveals the fact that one must have borrowed 
from the other, or both have borrowed from a prophecy older than 
either. The latter is probably the explanation. In addition to his 
way of regarding the enemies of Jerusalem as for that reason ene- 
mies of God, Obadiah shares with the other prophets their atti- 
tude towards the events of human history, and regards the Unseen 
God as the Governing Power, who makes and develops the lives 
of nations, as of men. 

The name of the Prophet Jonah is a much more familiar one 
than any of the four prophets we have been considering, for we 
have all of us heard of Jonah and the 'great fish.' He is mentioned 
in the Book of Kings. 2 Kings xiv. verse 25 : 'He (Jeroboam 11.) 
restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the 
sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, 
which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amit- 
tai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher.' Gath-hepher was in 
Zebulon, and a popular tradition still locates his grave near Naz- 
areth. iHe foretold, as we have seen, to Jeroboam II. his success 
in the struggle with Syria. These prophecies are not preserved. 

The Book of Jonah differs greatly from the books of any of the 
other prophets. It is not a collection of prophecies, but a narrative, 
or succession of scenes in the prophet's life. The story cannot be 
better told than in the actual words of the Bible in the first chapter 
of Jonah : 'Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of 
Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry 
against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah 
rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 237 

went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so 
he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them 
unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent 
out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in 
the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners 
were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the 
wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But 
Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and 
was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto 
him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so 
be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. And they said 
every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may 
know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and 
the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray 
thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? 
and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people 
art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the 
Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry 
land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, 
Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the 
presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they 
unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea . may be calm 
unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said 
unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall 
the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great 
tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it 
to the land ; but they could not : for the sea wrought, and was 
tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, 
and said. We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not 
perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood : for 
thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, 
and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her rag- 
ing. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sac- 
rifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared 
a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of 
the fish three days and three nights.' 

Why was Jonah unwilling to preach repentance and the coming 
judgment of God to Nineveh? He was loath to do so because he 
was a Jew, and in his Jewish exclusiveness dreaded that God (see 
chapter iv. verse 2) might pity Nineveh, and have mercy upon it, 
and thus Jonah's prophecies of God's judgment would not be carried 
out. The story tells us he shipped at Joppa for Tarshish in Spain. 
A great storm arose. The sea became calm after Jonah was thrown 



238 ^ 'ALL HAIL' 

overboard by the sailors. The ktory goes on thit the prophet was 
swallowed by a great fish, ahd, in response to his prayer to God, 
was cast up by the fish, after thi-ee days, upon the dry land. Then 
the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, with the same 
command. This time Jonah went to Nineveh, and at his preaching, 
the burden of which was 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be over- 
thrown' (chapter iii. verse 4), the people of Nineveh repented, be- 
lieved God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackloth. Chapter iii. 
verses 6-10: 'For word came unto the king oi Nineveh, and he arose 
from his throne, and he laid his robe from hhn', and covered him 
with sackcloth, arid sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed 
and published through Nineveh by the decree oi the king and his 
nobles, saying. Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste 
any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast 
be covered with sackcloth, ahd cry mightily unto God : yea, let them 
turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in 
their hands. Wlio cah tell "if God will turn and repent, and turn 
away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their 
works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of 
the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them ; and he did 
it not/ 

Thus' Jonah's mission came to an end. His prdphecy that in 
forty days Nineveh would be ' overthrown did riot end as he ex- 
pected, and Jonah was bitterly disappointed. Chapter iv. verses i, 
2: 'But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 
And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray, thee, O Lord, 
. . . . Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from 
me ; for it is better for me to die than to live.' Though Jonah's 
inission to Nineveh was over, when they repented and were for- 
given, God had still a most iriiportant lesson to teach His prophet. 
The latter had expected that God would carry out the heavy sen- 
tence he had been sent to pronounce on Nirieveh. Without this 
result he considered his mission a failure. This was not only be^ 
cause Tie had prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, but because he 
had himself, from the narrow Jewish standpoint, rejoiced 'in the 
coming doom. That doom, he considered, was simple justice on 
the heathen, and he ventured to set up his oWri view of what God 
ought to do against his experience of what God had actually done. 
While blaming Jonah are we not apt to do very much what he 
did? Do we not often settle befoi^eharid how God may be ex- 
pected to act towards ourselves or others, and then question His 
justice, or loving kindness, when He acts in a different way? This 
reasoning is, of course, as wrong and as foolish as the same reason- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 239 

ing was in Jonah. In us this fault is graver, for we sin against 
light which he. did not possess. St P?iul says (Romans xi. verse 
3S) : 'O! the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge 
of God! -how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past 
finding out!' But, happily for Jonah, his conscience responded to 
the voice of God. It spoke to him and. said, 'Doest thou well to be 
angry?' '(chapter iv. verse 4). Jonah felt that his anger was not 
pleasing to God, and he began to realise that it was as unreasonable 
as it was wrong. It had all the time been the Lord's wish, and His 
wise purpose, that Jonah's preaching to the people of Nineveh 
should have the desired effect upon them, namely, that of causing 
them to repent of their, wickedness and so receive forgiveness, before 
it was too late. We see, therefore, how Jonah had, against his 
will, been made to do the very thing the Lord had willed from the 
fi:rst. Surely it was best for Nineveh to repent and be saved, instead 
of being overthrown and hundreds of thousands destroyed, and 
much' cattle. God taught Jonah the truth, and brought him' to a 
better mind by the incident. of a gourd which He had made to grow 
over Jonah, 'that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver 
him from his grief (verse 6). 

;. God smote this gourd and it withered. This greatly incensed 
Jonah. God's voice spoke to his conscience, but he persisted at 
first against it. The tender consideration for animals in the last 
words of this passage, 'and much cattle,' ought to be noticed. There 
is a gradually growing revelation throughout the Old Testament of 
the existence of a duty of man towards God, as regard his treat- 
ment of the animals which God has placed in his care and keeping.^ 
God has given man dominion over the animals, to be used in con- 
cious imitation of God's merciful dominion over man. This revela- 
tion, like the rest of God's revelations, is very clearly given, being 
made gradually as man is able to receive it. Such a progressive 
mode of teaching mankind is exactly the mode we adopt in teaching 
our children. We begin with the very easiest teaching, and then 
lead them on, step by step, from the lower to the higher. If we 
put the fullest knowledge on any subject before little children, it 
would be quite useless to them. They would not have the power 
to understand it. And just so God had to train the Israelites, teach- 
ing them gradu-ally their duty towards God and their fellowmen, 
and then a little of their duty to animals, as they were able to receive 
it. Even at the present time we are far from having learned this 
valuable lesson, but some of us are awakening to a better under- 
standing of it, and never has there been a time at which God's 
lessons in this duty have; been more rapidly assimilated by. those 



240 'ALL HAIL' 

scholars who have opened their hearts and minds to this particular 
department of our Heavenly Father's teaching. 

Having brought to an end the narrative of Jonah, we may now 
give a little time to the interpretation of this story. The incident 
of the 'great fish' is what catches most people's attention, though 
it is the least important part of the book. First of all let us point 
to the obvious and almost universal inaccuracy by which this book 
is supposed to say whale, when what it really says is 'great fish.' 
The story of the swallowing of Jonah by the fish is taken by some 
as a literal history, by others as an inspired parable. In support 
of the latter interpretation, by which Jonah represents the Jewish 
nation swallowed up by Babylon and afterwards delivered, such a 
passage as Jeremiah li. 44 may be quoted, where God says: 'And I 
will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth 
that which he hath swallowed up.' But, as a matter of fact, the 
incident of the 'great fish' is not essential to the religious and moral 
teaching of the Book of Jonah. This will be seen if a deliverance 
from drowning by an unexpected ship were substituted for the in- 
cident of the fish : God's lessons would still remain the same. 
And what are these lessons? They are manifold. There are the 
lesser lessons as well as the ones of greater importance. For ex- 
ample, that true repentance and true fear of God bring salvation 
from God. This is shown in the case of the sailors; again in the 
case of Jonah himself, and again in the case of Nineveh. Another 
lesson is the teaching that a prophecy is conditioned as to its ful- 
filment, depends on conditions and is not absolute, so that an 
inspired prophecy of judgment, which would be carried out if there 
were no repentance, may be stopped by repentance. 

But by far the most important lesson conveyed in the Book of 
Jonah was that God's gracious purposes were not confined to the 
Jews alone, as they were then too commonly supposed to be, but 
belonged to the heathen also, if they would turn away from their 
sins and turn to God with a true repentance. Jonah himself rep- 
resented the popular, but false, doctrine that the Gentiles were out- 
side the pale. He tried not to preach to Nineveh at all, and when 
his preaching moved them to repentance, and they were forgiven, he 
was deeply angered, because the doom of destruction he had de- 
clared was not carried out. The closing words of the book pro- 
nounce the final condemnation upon this narrow Jewish belief, and 
in the brief reference to the sparing of the animals disclose a mar- 
vellous vision of God's all-embracing fatherly love, one of the most 
remarkable anticipations in the Old Testament of the revelation of 
God in Christ. While there can be no doubt that Jonah was a real 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 241 

prophet, who lived in the time of Jeroboam the Second, and while 
the lessons we have mentioned and the purpose of the book are 
generally agreed on, different views are entertained by different stu- 
dents as to the interpretation. 

It has been taken very commonly as a literal narrative of facts, 
and taken in this way it conveys very effectively the lessons we 
have referred to. It has also been taken as an allegory of the his- 
tory of Israel as a nation, Jonah representing Israel. Israel was 
called upon by God to witness for Him among the heathen, to be the 
prophet-nation — the nation that was to speak for God. Israel dis- 
liked and refused to perform this mission. In His mercy God sent 
the huge Empire of Babylon (the great fish) to swallow up the 
prophet-nation, in order to teach it its duty. Thus swallowed up, 
Israel, like Jonah, turned to the Lord and was afterwards mirac- 
ulously thrown up by Babylon, i.e., helped to return from exile. 
After this return the Israelites were many of them disappointed 
that the doom pronounced by the prophets on the great heathen 
nations was not carried out immediately as they had expected. 

Those who take this latter view of the book as an allegory re- 
tain the full value of the religious lessons that are the purpose for 
which the book was written. Our Lord's reference to the incident 
of Jonah and the fish is perfectly clear if we take the literal view, 
but perhaps needs a word of explanation if we take the allegorical 
one. As Israel was swallowed up by Babylon, and yet emerged 
with life, and in a better condition than before, so our Lord was 
swallowed up by the grave and remained there three days, and, 
contrary to all probabilities, emerged from the grave, not only 
alive, but exalted to the Risen life of Glory and Power. 

The next prophet, Micah, was younger than Isaiah, but a con- 
temporary. Unlike Isaiah, who was a power at court, Micah lived 
among the poorer classes, and knew from experience their wrongs 
and their needs. He was a native of Moresheth, a small town of 
the maritime plain near Gath. A man of the people, he sympathised 
with all the troubles of the people, and this sympathy is his distin- 
guishing characteristic. 

The teaching of Micah is purely religious and moral. He did not 
aim at influencing the policy of the nation, as Isaiah did. He saw 
idolatry and godlessness among the princes and the people of 
Judah. And he saw no less the injustice to and oppression of the 
poor growing among the upper classes; and he saw with clearness 
the judgment coming on the nation for the wrongs of the poor. 
When he mentions Babylon, it is only as one of the chief cities of 
the Assyrian Empire. He declares in the plainest way the punish- 



242 ' ALL HAIL ' 

ment which must follow all the evils which deface Judah and Jeru- 
salem. jMicah iii. verses 9-12: 'Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of 
the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor 
judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, 
and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, 
and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof 
divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say. Is not 
the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. Therefore shall 
Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem' shall become 
heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the 
forest.' 

But together with his vision of a coming judgment, he has a clear 
vision of the nation's restoration. Zion is to be clothed with even 
greater beauty than before. It is to become a spiritual centre for 
the whole earth. The fulfilment in Christ of such a passage as the 
following is perfectly plain to us, who see the actual establishment 
of Christ's kingdom on the earth. Chapter iv. verses 1-5 : 'But in 
the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house 
of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it 
shall be exalted above the hills ; and people shall flow unto it. And 
many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the 
mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he 
will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths : for the law 
shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 
And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations 
afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their 
spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up a sword against 
nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit 
every man under his vine and under his fig tree ; and none shall 
make them afraid : for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken 
it. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, 
and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and 
ever.' 

Nor was the Messianic meaning of the passage missed by the 
Jews, at the time of our Saviour's birth, as we know from the quo- 
tation of chapter v. verse 2, by the chief priests and scribes to 
Herod, when he asked where Christ was to be born : 'But thou. 
Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands 
of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be 
ruler in Israel ; whose, goings forth have been from' of old, from 
everlasting.' 

We cannot leave Micah without giving one of his best passages, 
One of the most beautiful and spiritual of the definitions of religion 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 243 

in the prophets. Chapter vi. verses 6-8: 'Wherewith shall I come 
before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God ? shall I come 
before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will 
the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, 
O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, 
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God?' 

Nahum was an Elkoshite, a native of a village which has never 
been clearly located. The prophecy of Nahum is directed entirely 
against Nineveh. As regards the date of Nahum's prophecy, we 
have our sole but sufficient guidance in the work itself. The cap- 
ture of Thebes in Egypt by the Assyrians under Assurbanipal 
shortly after 664 B.C. is alluded to as just having occurred. The de- 
struction of Nineveh by the hordes of the north and the Babylonians 
had not yet taken place. That fixes Nahum's date as after 664 
B.C. and before 606 B.C. The dignity and force of Nahum's poetry 
approaches often very nearly to that of Isaiah, e.g., he says (chap- 
ter i. verse 3) : 'The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and 
will not at all acquit the wicked : the Lord hath his way in the 
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his 
feet.' 

The following is the conclusion of his prophecy (chapter iii. 
verses 1-3, 12) : 'Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and 
robbery; the prey departeth not; the noise of a whip, and the noise 
of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the 
jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword 
and the glittering spear : and there is a multitude of slain, and a 
great number of carcases ; and there is none end of their corpses ; 

they stumble upon their corpses All thy strong holds 

shall be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs ; if they be shaken, they 
shall even fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, thy people in 
the midst of thee are women : the gates of thy land shall be set 
wide open unto thine enemies : the fire shall devour thy bars. 
Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds: go into 
clay, and tread the morter, make strong the brickkiln. There shall 
the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up 
like the cankerworm : make thyself many as the cankerworm, make 
thyself many as the locusts. Thou has multiplied thy merchants 
above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and fleeth 
away. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the 
great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but 



244 'ALL HAIL' 

when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known 
where they are. Thy shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria : thy 
nobles shall dwell in the dust; thy people is scattered upon the 
mountains, and no man gathereth them. There is no healing of thy 
bruise; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee 
shall clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wicked- 
ness passed continually?' 

Habakkuk was a prophet of whom we know nothing save the 
contents of his great work, the great vision which he saw from 
the watch-tower of faith. He prophesied probably at the beginning 
of the Chaldseen supremacy, during the reign of Jehoahaz, son of 
Josiah, or his successor Jehoiakim, perhaps about 600 B.C. Nebu- 
chadnezzar had conquered Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish, and 
Jeremiah had at once seen that Western Asia must fall into the 
hands of the Chaldseans, who had three years before destroyed 
Nineveh. Habakkuk throws his prophecy into a dramatic form — 
a dialogue between God and himself. He begins by pleading with 
God on account of the wickedness and lawlessness of the land. 
Jehovah replies that His judgment on Israel is at hand (chapter 
i. verses 5-1 1) : 'Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and 
wonder marvellously : for I will work a work in your days, which 
ye will not believe, though it be told you. For, lo, I raise up the 
Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through 
the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not 
theirs. They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their 
dignity shall proceed of themselves. Their horses also are swifter 
than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves : 
and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall 
come from far ; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. They 
shall come all for violence : their faces shall sup up as the east 
wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they 
shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them : 
they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and 
take it. Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and 
offend, imputing this his power unto his god.' 

Habakkuk, like Jeremiah, sees that Chaldsea is the instrument of 
God ; but he also sees that the idolatry, ambition, and violence of 
Chaldsea will be chastised in due time. Habakkuk was one of the 
greatest among the Minor Prophets for power of imagination and 
splendour of language, and has left some notable sayings, such 
as. The just shall live by his faith.' It is difficult to surpass the 
magnificent manifestation of God described in the third chapter, 
3-15, 'God came from Teman, and the Holy One from' mount Paran. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 245 

Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of 
his praise. And his brightness was as the light; he had horns (rays, 
R.V.) coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his 
power. Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals (fiery 
bolts, R.V.) went forth at his feet. He stood, and measured the 
earth : he beheld, and drove asunder the nations ; and the everlasting 
mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are 
everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction : and the curtains 
of the land of Midian did tremble. Was the Lord displeased against 
the rivers ? was thine anger against the rivers ? was thy wrath against 
the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses, and thy chariots 
of salvation? Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the 
oaths of the tribes, even thy sword. Selah. Thou didst cleave the 
earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee, and they trembled : 
the overflowing of the water passed by : the deep uttered his voice, 
and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still 
in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at 
the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through 
the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. 
Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salva- 
tion with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house 
of the wicked, by discovering (laying bare, R.V.) the foundation 
unto the neck. Selah. Thou didst strike through with his staves 
the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter 
me: their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. Thou didst 
walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great 
waters.' 

This is a lyric ode intended to be sung to music. Selah, meaning 
'strike up,' indicates this as it does so frequently in the Psalms. 
Note the first words of verse 11: 'The sun and moon stood still,' 
there we have exactly the statement of what occurred at the Valley 
of Beth-Horon at the word of Joshua. Few would be so foolish as 
to take noble poetry like this literally ; there is a truth of poetry as 
well as a literal truth, and to take a truth of poetry literally is to 
falsify it. 

Zephaniah's prophecies have for their date the reign of King 
Josiah, clearly before the great reformation in his eighteenth year, 
when he put down, — probably under Zephaniah's influence — the idol- 
atry attacked and exposed by Zephaniah. He was a contemporary 
of Jeremiah, and apparently his was the first prophecy after the 
pause of fifty years which succeeded the death of Isaiah. All we 
know of this prophet is contained in the opening of his Book, and 
we may give the first sixteen verses as a representative portion of 



246 * ALL HAIL ' 

his prophecy (Zephaniah i. verses 1-16) : The word of the Lord 
which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, 
the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah, the 
son of Amon, king of Judah. I will utterly consume all things from 
off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will 
consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the 
stumblingblocks with the wicked ; and I will cut off man from off the 
land, saith the Lord. I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, 
and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the 
remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with 
the priests: and them that worship the host of heaven upon the 
housetops ; and them that worship and that swear by the Lord, and 
that swear by Malcham (Milcom) ; and them that are turned back 
from the Lord ; and those that have not sought the Lord, nor 
inquired for him. Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God : 
for the day of the Lord is at hand : for the Lord hath prepared a 
sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the 
day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the 
king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel. 
In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the thresh- 
hold, which fill their master's houses with violence and deceit. 
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that there 
shall be the noise of a cry from the fish-gate, and an howling from 
the second, and a great crashing from the hills. Howl, ye inhabi- 
tants of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are cut down; all 
they that bear silver are cut off. And it shall come to pass at that 
time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men 
that are settled on their lees : that say in their heart, the Lord will 
not do good, neither will he do evil. Therefore their goods shall 
become a booty, and their houses a desolation : they shall also build 
houses, but not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but 
not drink the wine thereof. The great day of the Lord is near, it 
is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord : 
the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of 
wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and deso- 
lation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick 
darkness. A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, 
and against the high towers.' 

We pass on to Haggai. 'We read about him in Ezra, and about his 
work. He was a contemporary and fellow-worker with Zechariah. 
His prophecy is dated the second year of Darius Hystaspes, 520 
B.C. The main object was to stir up the returned Exiles to rebuild 
the Temple. The Temple was still unbuilt, it may be remembered, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE ' 247 

sixteen years after the Return. God's displeasure at this neglect 
had been, Haggai points out, shown in a great drought and a con- 
sequent great failure of crops. Haggai was very possibly born at 
Babylon during the Captivity. He took an active part with Zecha- 
i-iah urging the Jewish Exiles who had returned to their country to 
abandon the shameful delay which had gone on so long, and at once 
to set to work and begin building the Temple. The definite result 
of Haggai's activity was the carrying out of that rebuilding. 

Chapter ii. verses 1-9: Tn the seventh month, in the one and 
twentieth day of the month, came the word of the Lord by the 
prophet Haggai, saying, Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Sheal- 
tiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high 
priest, and to the residue of the people, saying. Who is left among 
you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it 
now.'' is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? Yet 
now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O 
Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest ; and be strong, all ye people 
of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the 
Lord of hosts : according to the word that I covenanted with you 
when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you : fear 
ye not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little 
while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and 
the dry, land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all 
nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the 
Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the 
Lord of hosts. The glory /of this latter house shall be greater than 
of the former, saith the Lord of hosts : and in this place will I 
give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.' 

This is a fair specimen of his writing, which contains a vigorous 
appeal to perform a definite and urgent duty. 

Zechariah was, as we have seen, the contemporary and colleague 
of Haggai, and his prophecies were delivered at the same time and 
for the same purpose. The joint efforts of Zechariah and Haggai 
were marked by immediate results, for a month after their prophe- 
cies, which were simultaneous, followed the laying of the founda- 
tion of the Temple. The first eight chapters give eight visions of 
,the night granted to this prophet, and intended to encourage the 
Jews, especially Zerubbabel, the leader of the people, and Joshua, 
the head of the priests, to go on with the building of the Temple. 
The chief points in each vision are shown to the prophet by an angel. 

The first of these visions is given in the first chapter, verses 8-18: 
T saw by night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he 
stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom; and behind 



248 'ALL HAIL' 

him were there red horses, speckled, and white. Then said I, O 
my lord, what are these? And the angel that talked with me said 
unto me, I will show thee what these be. And the man that stood 
among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom the 
Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth. And they 
answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees, 
and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth, and, behold, 
all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest. Then the angel of the Lord 
answered and said, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have 
mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou 
hast had indignation these threescore and ten years? And the Lord 
answered the angel that talked with me with good words and com- 
fortable words. So the angel that communed with me said unto me, 
Cry thou, saying. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for 
Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And I am very sore 
displeased with the heathen that are at ease : for I was but a little 
displeased, and they helped forward the affliction. Therefore thus 
saith the Lord ; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies : my house 
shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be 
stretched forth upon Jerusalem. Cry yet, saying. Thus saith the 
Lord of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread 
abroad; and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose 
Jerusalem.' 

The fourth chapter contains the vision of the golden candlestick 
(or lampstand), representing the restored community: 'And the 
angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man 
that is wakened out of his sleep, and said unto me, What seest 
thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of 
gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, 
and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: 
two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the 
other upon the left side thereof. So I answered and spake to the 
angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord? Then 
the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest 
thou not what these be? And I said. No, my lord. Then he an- 
swered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord 
unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my 
spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? 
before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain : and he shall bring 
forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace 
r.nto it. Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying. 
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house ; his 
lands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 249 

hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of 
small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in 
the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the 
Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth. Then an- 
swered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon 
the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? 
And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive 
branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden 
oil out of themselves ? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou 
what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he. These are 
the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.' 
(The two anointed ones were Joshua and Zerubbabel.) 

Chapter vi. begins with a vision of the four chariots of God, 
sent forth to execute God's judgments in the earth. One chariot 
has red horses, the second black, the third white, and the fourth 
grisled (i.e., grey) and bay horses. These chariots, the angel ex- 
plained, are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from' 
standing before the Lord of all the earth. The one which goes 
northwards is to satisfy its wrath on Babylon. In this chapter 
the prophet prophesies of the Branch, saying, 'Behold the man whose 
name is The BRANCH ; and he shall grow up out of his place, 
and he shall build the temple of the Lord' (verse 12). 

The immediate meaning of this is commonly referred to Zerub- 
babel, but the ultimate meaning has been seen to refer to the Messiah, 
who is also referred to in chapter iii. verse 8 : 'for, behold, I will 
bring forth my servant the BRANCH.' 

The eighth chapter is a picture of the Messianic Kingdom, the 
spiritual nature of which the following passage clearly indicates (viii. 
verses 16, 17) : These are the things that ye shall do ; Speak ye 
every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth 
and peace in your gates : and let none of you imagine evil in your 
hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these 
are things that I hate, saith the Lord.' 

In the ninth chapter we have a celebrated passage predicting the 
Advent of the Messiah as the Prince of Peace (verses 9, 10) : 
'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusa- 
lem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having 
salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal 
of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the 
horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he 
shall speak peace unto the heathen : and his dominion shall be from 
sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.' 
Part of this prophecy is used by St. Matthew in describing Our 



250 'ALL HAIL' 

Lord's entry into Jerusalem riding on an ass's colt> to show that 
that entry was that of the Messiah, predicted by Zechariah centuries 
before in the passage we have just given. St. Matthew xxi. verses 
4, 5 : 'All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the prophet, saying. Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy 
King Cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the 
foal of an ass.' 

The distinguishing characteristic of Zechariah (though chapters 
ix. to xiv. are very commonly taken to be by another author than 
Zechariah, and certainly are very unlike the other chapters in their 
Messianic subject-matter and point of view) is the clearness of his 
predictions in his later chapters of the coming of the Messianic 
Age, ushered in by the coming of the Messiah Himself. The 
prophet uses the great Messianic Hope as a motive to urge on the 
rebuilding of the Temple, and then God would take up His abode 
in His Temple. He seems to make the arrival of the Messianic 
Age and the Messiah dependent on the rebuilding of the Temple. 
With God in His Temple, the Messiah might be expected soon. 
The key to the whole Book viewed as a unity is the Messianic 
Hope, and the Central Figure is the Messianic King. The last two 
verses of chapter xiv. express very beautifully the prophet's ideal 
of holiness, which is to come, in every part of common life : 'In 
that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS 
UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the Lord's House shall be 
like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in 
Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that 
sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in 
that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the House of the 
Lord of hosts.' 

The last writer in point of time, as well as of place, in the Old 
Testament, is the Prophet Malachi, which is perhaps not a proper 
name, but a word signifying 'My Messenger.' When Malachi 
wrote,. the Temple had already been rebuilt, and public worship was 
regularly carried on in it. The love of idols was gone, and the evils 
which he assails were not the old evils of idolatry, oppression of 
the poor, or gross immorality, but rather such errors as delays 
and neglect of the people in paying the sacred dues; intermarriage 
with foreign women; degeneracy in the priests. These are just the 
evils we have seen mentioned in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
and they point to the same date as that of those two reformers. In 
the eighth verse of the first chapter we read that a Persian governor 
was ruling over Judah, which was now a Persian Province, and this 
evidence, too, is in favour of a date not long before the second ar- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 251 

rival of Nehemiah, 433 b.c. It is evident from the contents in the 
second and third chapters that there was a good deal of questioning 
of the Divine Government of the world. People complained that 
righteousness seemed to find no greater favour with God than un- 
righteousness, and accordingly they neglected to pay tithes, and 
make their offerings. The priests, too, dared in their neglectful- 
ness to present inferior and unclean offerings to God, which they 
would not have dared to offer to the Persian governor. To the 
complaints of the people Malachi replies that the day. is coming when 
God will own those which belong to Him and punish the wicked. 

Chapter iii. : 'Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall pre- 
pare the way before me : and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly 
come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye 
delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But 
who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he 
appeareth ? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' sope : and 
he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver : and he shall purify 
the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may 
offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the 
offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the 
days of old, and as in former years. And I will come near to you 
to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, 
and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against 
those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the 
fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and 
fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts. For I am the Lord, I 
change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even 
from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordi- 
nances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return 
unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said. Wherein shall we 
return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye 
say. Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye 
are cursed with a curse : for ye have robbed me, even this whole na- 
tion. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be 
meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of 
hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you 
out a blessing, that there shall not be room' enough to receive it. 
And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not 
destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her 
fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. And all na- 
tions shall call you blessed : for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith 
the Lord of hosts. Your words have been stout against me, saith the 
Lord. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee? 



252 'ALL HAIL' 

Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we 
have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully be- 
fore the Lord of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, 
they that work wickedness are set up ; yea, they that tempt God are 
even delivered. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one 
to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of 
remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, 
and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith 
the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and 
I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. 
Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the 
wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.' 

Chapter iv. : Tor, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an 
oven ; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be 
stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the 
Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 
But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise 
with healing in his wings ; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as 
calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they 
shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall 
do this, saith the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses 
my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, 
with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah 
the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the 
Lord : and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and 
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the 
earth with a curse.' 

Thus we have come to the end at once of the prophets and of the 
Old Testament. The books of the prophets are full of beautiful 
thoughts and wise teaching. It is wonderful to think how God 
inspired this unique succession of men, many of them of humble 
origin, to carry His message, not only to their own times, but to the 
far-off after ages ; not only to the Jews, but to the foremost nations 
of the modem world. The writings of the prophets stand out 
brightly against the gloomy background of the past, and still retain 
the power of illuminating men's lives in the present. The influ- 
ence of their teaching possesses its pristine educating power. The 
reading of their works is able still to focus our spiritual eye on the 
Divine Being, the Master-mind of which the whole visible universe 
is the expression, whose mercy and love, even to the rebellious, 
foreshadowed and pointed to the coming of the Great Deliverer, who 
was to accomplish the Purpose of the Eternal, and establish the 
Kingdom of God on the earth. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

The Origin and Canon of the Scriptures — The Manuscripts— 
The Versions — Our English Bible — Interval between the 
Old Testament and the New — The Preparation for Christ s 
Coming — The Situation in Palestine — The Synoptics — The 
Fourth Gospel. 
We have given some account of the thirty-nine Books of the Old 
Testament, written mostly in Hebrew, a few passages only in Ara- 
maic. The second part of the Bible we are about to enter on is the 
collection of writings known as the New Testament, which are all 
in Greek except some few words of Aramaic. It seems a fitting 
place here to explain the familiar word 'Testament,' which, like 
many familiar terms accepted without being inquired into, is very 
commonly not rightly understood. The word 'Testament' (a dispo- 
sition of property by will) was chosen to represent a word in the 
original Hebrew 'Berith,' in the Greek 'Diathheke' (more accurately 
translated by the word 'Covenant'), in order to represent the 
absolute authority of God in His Covenant with man. And so 
'Testament' became the title of the books containing God's Covenant 
or promises of blessings, which became man's inheritance in the 
death of Christ. The Old and New Testament should be under- 
stood in the sense of the Old and New Covenant, that is, the agree- 
ments made between God and His people under the Jewish and 
under the Christian dispensation. 

The question occurs to us, How did the Old Testament come into 
existence? At first no doubt the earliest religious experience was 
handed down by word of mouth. It is not very probable, though 
quite possible, that the Patriarchs used the Babylonian method of 
records, — clay tablets, on which, while the clay was soft, the cunei- 
form writing was impressed. In process of time various collec- 
tions of the traditions and the religious songs — at first perhaps 
oral, then written — began to be made. There are many references 
to other books in the Old Testament, such as the Book of Jasher, 
quoted in Joshua, and 'the book of the wars of the Lord,' quoted 
in Numbers, which point to the fact that the Old Testament, in its 
present form, is composed of materials drawn from earlier coUec- 

253 



254 'ALL HAIL' 

tions. This brings before us the fact that there were other writings 
of the Jews besides the Old Testament. There were in fact a 
great many, and the latest of these writings, not contained in the 
Old Testament, have come down to us and are know as the Apocry- 
pha. Why is this distinction made? The simplest answer is that 
the general consent of the Jewish Church gradually decided to make 
this separation. The experience of the Jewish Church of the in- 
spiration and value of these chosen books was the reason for that 
decision. The steps by which this selection of the books was made 
are very little known, but there is no doubt that the whole chosen 
collection, known as the Old Testament, was formed gradually by 
the amalgamation of smaller collections. So much for the forma- 
tion of the Canon of the Old Testament. Canon, of course, means 
the collection of books in the Old and New Testament, originally 
signifying a measuring rod, and so the space covered by it, and 
hence the books measured off from all other books. 

Now as to the Canon of the New Testament. It is a collection 
of twenty-seven books. The Jewish Bible, the Bible used by Our 
Lord and His disciples, the books of our Old Testament, became 
quite naturally the Bible of the early Christian Church. Round the 
Jewish Scriptures gradually accumulated a large number of Chris- 
tian writings. Those which stood the test of the experience of the 
Christian Church, which was guided as Our Lord had promised by 
the Holy Spirit, were gradually accepted as canonical. The rever- 
ence for the Jewish Scriptures felt by the early Christians was far 
to deep for any one of them to write a line with the deliberate 
intention of adding to them. It was the immediate necessities of 
the Church which called the writings of the New Testament into 
existence. In the case of the New Testament, as we have seen in 
the case of the Old, a large quantity of apocryphal writings, such 
as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, had to be 
rejected as inferior. The rejection of the one body of writings as 
apocryphal and the acceptance of the other as canonical, was made 
by the general consent of the Christian Church, The selection of 
the books finally included in the New Testament was very gradual. 
The position of some of the books of our New Testament was long 
a subject of doubt. As late as 325 a.d. Eusebius, in his Ecclesias- 
tical History, divided the books into three sections: books univer- 
sally acknowledged ; books disputed ; books spurious. The section 
of the disputed books includes those known by the names of James, 
Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, Revelation. 

St. Jerome towards the close of the fourth century accepted all 
the books of our present Canon, as did St. Augustine, who was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 25s 

present at the Council of Carthage a.d. 397, when the decision of the 
Church was finally given. As the books were all written in the first 
century it will be seen that this decision was neither hasty nor 
arbitrary, but the clear result of the collective experience of the 
Church, testing the books through the centuries, and holding fast 
to only that which it found good. Clearly we owe the Old Testa- 
ment to the Jewish Church. Members of that Church first wrote 
the books by the inspiration of God. The Church itself afterwards 
selected the books by the same inspiration, and the same process in 
the Christian Church gave us our New Testament. Whereas the 
Old Testament spreads over many centuries, and represents the 
collected religious experience of inspired men during many years, 
Abraham's date being probably about 2250 b.q, the New Testament 
was all written in the course of less than a century. The New 
Testament Scriptures were all of them, as we have seen, written 
in Greek, which had become one of the two languages generally 
understood and used in Palestine in Our Lord's time, the other 
being Aramaic, the language of Syria. 

In the New Testament the Gospels come first, because they are 
by far the most important books of the collection. But the Epistles 
of St. Paul were the first to be written. The first of these was the 
First Epistle to the Thessalonians, generally dated between 49 and 
S3 A.D. At first all teaching in the Christian Church was by word 
of mouth. This oral teaching by the mouths of the Apostles was for 
some time felt to be amply sufficient, even in the case of instruction 
as to the foundation facts of the Christian religion, instruction as 
to the Life, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord. This dependence 
on memory was also the rule at that time among Jewish teachers, 
and it will be remembered that our Lord Himself wrote nothing, 
nothing at least that has come down to us. He trusted to the 
m.emory of His disciples to preserve His teaching, and it is thanks to 
them that we can still read our Lord's own words. As the Church 
increased in numbers, and the labours of St. Paul and later mis- 
sionaries carried the Gospel to distant lands, and especially as 
heresies began to appear, the need of a written form of the Apos- 
tolic tradition began to be felt, notes of the Apostles' teaching 
began to be made, and narratives based on these memories of the 
Gospel History began to be circulated. This we know from the 
classical preface of St. Luke, i. 1-4: 'Forasmuch as many have 
taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things 
which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered 
them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and 
ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had 



256 ' ALL HAIL ' 

perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write 
unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest 
know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been in- 
structed' (i.e., catechised). 

St. Luke's Gospel was, as he states, written expressly to supply a 
more accurate record of the facts, in order to give to Theophilus, 
and to other Christians who were in his position, a more perfect 
understanding of them. The reason the four Gospels were ac- 
cepted as superior to the other attempts, referred to by St. Luke, 
was partly that they were of Apostolic authorship, or else supplied 
by the experience of an Apostle, and partly that they were superior 
records in themselves. It is important to remember that our four 
Gospels are the original Gospels received in the early Christian 
Church. This fact is proved by a mass of evidence, of which we 
may merely mention that of Justin Martyr, who died 150 a.d., and 
that of the list known as the Muratorian Fragment, which belongs 
to the latter part of the same century. The reason why we allude 
to this mass of evidence of the acceptance and use of our four 
Gospels, is because we have no copies of the New Testament older 
than the fourth century. The cause of this absence of early copies 
is partly, perhaps, because they were written on perishable mate- 
rials, but it is due chiefly to the deliberate destruction of the Scrip- 
tures in the persecution of Diocletian, 302 a.d. 

This brings us to ask the question on what these first copies of 
the Scriptures were written. Apparently on the material referred 
to by St. John in the twelfth verse of his second epistle : 'Having 
many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and 
ink: but I trust to come to you, and speak face to face . . . .' 
The paper referred to here consisted of the separated layers of the 
papyrus reed, which grows freely in the Nile, and is the TDulrush' 
used to make the ark in which Moses was found by Pharaoh's 
daughter. It is interesting to note that the Bible ultimately derives 
its name from this reed. Biblos is the Greek name of the inner 
layer of the papyrus, and was afterwards applied to the paper made 
from it, and then to the book proper written on it. From the dim- 
inutive, Bihlion, comes the plural, Bihlia, which, owing to a mistake, 
due to its apparently feminine termination, was used as a singular 
in Latin. Thus the word Bible means : Book, as derived from the 
Latin; and Books, as derived from the Greek. Both derivations 
suit the meaning. Our Bible is both one Book, the single inspira- 
tion of God, and a library of Books, the work of many men. Bible 
in the singular is used in Mark xii. verse 26, for the Book of the 
Mosaic Law. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 257 

A few years after the destruction of the manuscripts by Diocletian, 
to which we have already alluded, came the triumph of Christianity 
in the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to the Christian faith. 
In the year 330 a.d. the Emperor ordered fifty copies of the Scrip- 
tures to be prepared for the churches in Constantinople; a sign 
that the old copies had disappeared. The fifty copies were written, 
probably, on vellum ; for our first manuscripts, which are on vellum, 
date from the fourth century, and from that time on we find a great 
and growing increase in the number of manuscripts. The manu- 
scripts which have survived are divided into classes according to 
the shape of the letters. The most important class is written en- 
tirely in capital letters. These manuscripts are called 'Uncials,' 
and there are about one hundred of them. The earliest of these 
is the Vatican Manuscript, known as Codex B, in the Vatican Li- 
brary at Rome, dating from the fourth century. The next is the 
Sinaitic Manuscript, known as Codex ^^ , which is in possession of 
the Greek Church, and is in the Imperial Museum at St. Peters- 
burg. Then comes the Alexandrian, known as Codex A, which is 
in the Manuscript-room of the British Museum. It was given to 
Charles I. by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1628. There is an 
Arabic inscription on the first sheet saying that it was written by 
Thekla the Martyr. 

The other and larger class of manuscripts is called Cursives, from 
the smaller 'running' hand, which was used from the ninth century 
on. The late date of these makes their value much less. There are 
nearly two thousand of them'. 

Another class of manuscripts is called Palimpsests, i.e., manu- 
scripts that had the original writing rubbed out, or partially rubbed 
out, to make room for new writing, the object, no doubt, being 
economy. Codex C, in the National Library in Paris, is the best- 
known specimen of a Palimpsest. 

It may be observed here that some of these manuscripts, like the 
Vatican one, contain the Greek version of the Old Testament as 
well as the Greek original of the New. We may add that while our 
Greek manuscripts of the Bible date back to the fourth century, 
none of the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament are earlier 
than the tenth century. 

Now a word as to the Versions. The oldest, a most important 
version, is the version of the Old Testament in Greek, known as 
the Septuagint, from the tradition that it was made by seventy 
scribes or scholars, sent from Jerusalem by the High Priest Eleazar 
to Alexandria at the request of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 285-247 b.c. 
Actually the greater part of the work was carried out in the second 



258 . ' ALL HAIL ' 

and third centuries before Christ. This version is of special im- 
portance, because it is from' it Our Lord quoted, and it was in com- 
mon use throughout Palestine. This version introduces us to the 
Greek New Testament, the language of which is largely derived 
from it. Most of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New 
are made from this Greek version direct, and not from the Hebrew. 
From this version sprang most of the other old versions, which are 
too numerous to mention. Among these is the Itala, or Old Lati? 
Version. When revising this old Latin version, St. Jerome formed 
the idea of translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew. The 
work began in 390 a.d., and occupied him fourteen years. The 
completed work is known as the Vulgate, or Popular Version. 

The version, however, which has done and is doing the greatest 
work in the world is our English Version of 161 1, known as the 
Authorised Version ; authorised, not by ecclesiastical authority, but 
by common consent of the nation, won by its surpassing merits 
as the great history of the growth of the greatest of religions. This 
is the English Book of Books, for it reigns over the hearts and 
lives not only of the people of the United Kingdom but also of 
that greater England beyond the Seas, including our Colonies and 
the great republic of our kindred in the United States. The Eng- 
lish Bible has done more than anything else to unify the Anglo- 
Saxon race by forming a national character that aims at serious 
and noble ideals, and by developing a literature not unworthy of 
being the fruit of this dominant influence. How did we get this 
most precious of our common possessions? The names of Csedmon 
and Bede and Alfred and ^Ifric recall the earlier efforts to give 
England the Bible in the vernacular : the first reminding us that the 
dawn of English poetry, more than twelve centuries ago, was a 
paraphrase of Genesis in verse. But the foremost great figure in 
the work of giving men the Bible in English was John Wiclif, 
Rector of Lutterworth. A born reformer, he relied on the Bible to 
lenew the nation's life. With the help of Nicholas de Hereford, 
one of his friends, the work was done. By the year 1382 the whole 
Bible was in the hands of the English people in their mother tongue. 
Wiclif's Bible was translated from the Vulgate, and the written 
copies (printing was not yet discovered) had a great circulation in 
spite of the efforts to suppress them. If Caedmon's paraphrase was 
a beginning of English poetry. Wiclif's Bible and Wiiclifs pam- 
phlets were the beginning of English prose. 

Exactly one hundred years after Wiclif's death, a man was born 
whose life-work was to improve upon that Wiclif had done. Wil- 
liam Tindale studied at Oxford, and afterwards proceeded to Cam- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 259 

bridge. About 1521 he decided to give his life to the translation of 
the New Testament, and afterwards of the whole Bible, from the 
original Hebrew and Greek into English, which was to be more 
faithful than Wiclif's version made from the Latin Vulgate. Find- 
ing no encouragement in England — and, indeed, no safe place — to 
carry out his plans, Tindale went to Germany. In 1525 or 1526 
he brought out at Worms a complete edition of the New Testament, 
of which three thousand copies were issued. This was from the 
press of F. Schoeffer the younger. Copies were sent to England, 
and were eagerly received on the one hand, and yet so vigorously 
destroyed on the other that only one complete copy remains. After 
that he worked at the books of the Old Testament, but was taken 
and imprisoned by his enemies, and sufifered martyrdom' in 1536 at 
Vilvorde, near Brussels. His qualifications had been, besides his 
high resolve, a good knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, with such a 
rare mastery of idiomatic English that the unrivalled beauty of 
the Authorised Version is chiefly due to its large borrowings from 
his inspired renderings. Rogers, his fellow-worker, who was really 
responsible for the later 'Matthew's' Bible, embodying the work of 
Tindale and Coverdale, died at the stake, 1555. Coverdale, too, had 
carried on Tindale's work in the version of 1535, and early in 1538 
undertook a new revision, based on 'Matthew's' Bible. The result 
was that the Great {i.e., large) Bible was issued in 1539, with 
Cranmer's preface appointing its use in churches. Though merely a 
revision, Coverdale's work has had an important influence on our 
Authorised Version, in which many felicities of expression are due 
to him, and help to make it the greatest work in English prose. 

The Prayer-book version of the Psalms is taken from Cover- 
dale's Bible, which by means of this part of it has had a lasting 
influence on the devotional life of the nation. We must pass on 
now, merely naming the Genevan Bible of the Marian exiles, and 
the fully-authorised Bishops' Bible, to our so-called Authorised Ver- 
sion of 161 1, seventy-five years after Tindale's martyrdom. It is a 
wonderful work. Its forty-seven revisers speak as one man, wisely 
embodying the best work of previous versions, chiefly the unrivalled 
rendering of Tindale, while it is so filled with the spirit and beauty 
of holiness that it might almost be called the Inspired Version. 
The Revised Version rendered necessary by the growth of knowl- 
edge, particularly of the text, had its origin in Convocation in 1870. 
Two companies of revisers were appointed, one for the Old Testa- 
ment, and another for the New. The first result, the Revised New 
Testament, was published in May 1881. The Revised Old Testa- 
ment in May 1885. This version should be in the hands of every 



26o 'ALL HAIL' 

student of the Bible, not in place of the Authorised Version, but 
side by side with it. The older Version is far more beautiful in its 
choice of language, and dignity and ease of style, but the Revised 
Version supplies an accuracy of translation, and that too from a 
more trustworthy text, which cannot be dispensed with. Talking of 
Versions, we may draw attention to the fact that the Bible has been 
translated into a multitude of languages, practically into all the 
known languages of the world. 

Before entering on a consideration of the Books of the New 
Testament, which we shall take mainly in their familiar order, as 
we did the Books of the Old Testament, it might be helpful to give 
some account of the interval that separates the last Books of the 
Old Testament from the first Books of the New. If one were to 
accept the traditional date of Daniel, the last Books of the Old 
Testament in point of date would be probably the Book of Malachi 
the prophet, and the historical Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. 

Nehemiah's second mission to Jerusalem was in the thirty-second 
year of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah xiii. verse 6), i.e. 433 B.C. The 
prophet Malachi wrote probably not much later. Judaea was a Per- 
sian province at that time, and remained so till Alexander the 
Great conquered Darius, at the great Battle of Issus in S33 B.C. 
With Alexander's conquest a far-reaching change began, which 
was one of the most important providential preparations for Chris- 
tianity, namely, the spread of the Greek influence and the Greek 
language over what afterwards became part of the Roman Empire, 
and especially among the Jewish race. After Issus, Alexander ad- 
vanced to Tyre, which he took after a desperate resistance and a 
siege of seven months. He then proceeded against Jerusalem. 
He was met at Scopus by a train of Jewish priests in their robes, 
and a great multitude in white garments. Moved by the dignity of 
these representatives of a religious state governed by God, he 
treated Jerusalem leniently, and himself offered a sacrifice in the 
Temple. 

The policy of Alexander was to bind together his whole vast 
Empire by the ties of Greek civilisation and language, and this 
policy was brought to bear on Palestine. After his early death 
in 323 B.C., the same policy was continued by his successors, and 
Greek influence flowed in on Jerusalem from its great centres, 
Antioch and Alexandria. Judaea fell first to the share of the Egyp- 
tian realm ruled by the Ptolemies, the successors of Alexander in 
this portion of his Empire. Large numbers of Jews were removed 
by Pt6lemy Lagus to Alexandria and other cities of Egypt, where 
they prospered as colonists. There they adopted the Greek Ian- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 261 

giiage, and felt the influence of the Greek literature. But their 
hearts were still in Jerusalem, which they frequently visited, thus 
bringing the leavening influence of Greek civilisation to bear upon 
the Holy City. 

The suzerainty of Egypt changed from time to time to the suze- 
rainty of Syria, the high priest ruling Jerusalem and seeing to the 
payment of the twenty talents to the suzerain for the time being. 
Two parties divided Jerusalem between them, the old conservative 
Jewish party and the new Greek party. We may for convenience 
call the policies of these two parties, Judaism and Hellenism. In 
the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, 17S-164 B.C., Syria being then 
suzerain, the Greek party at Jerusalem, which comprised most of 
the upper classes, procured the appointment of Jason as high 
priest by a gift of money to Antiochus. Jason had permission to 
set up a gymnasium in order to Hellenise the youth and to enrol 
the people of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch (i.e., to give them 
the rights of citizenship), and he actually sent three hundred pieces 
of silver to Tyre to provide a sacrifice to Hercules. 

The object of the Greek party at Jerusalem now became openly 
the acceptance of the Greek religion by the nation, but when the 
doings of the next high priest, Menelaus, were known in the country 
parts, the people rose in the interests of the old Jewish religion. 
This opposition to Hellenism came from the Scribes and their dis- 
ciples, the priesthood having gone over to an alliance with Heathen- 
ism. In this action of the Scribes we can see the influence of the 
Old Testament, the Bible as it then existed, especially of the Pen- 
tateuch. A party grew up, chiefly in the country parts, of pious 
men and women who studied the law and loved the old religion. 
They were called the Chasidim or Hasidim, that is, the pious. 

The struggle at Jerusalem between the Greek and the Jewish 
party came to a head when Antiochus, for the second time, sacked 
Jerusalem, and deliberately set about the extirpation of the old 
Jewish religion. All Jewish worship was abolished by the Syrian 
king. An altar to Zeus was set up upon the great altar of burnt 
offering in the Temple, 'the abomination of desolation' referred to 
in Daniel, and the Jews were forced to join in heathen sacrifices 
and to eat swine's flesh. The Syrian officials went about the country 
to enforce the king's commands. The Chasidim' chose death rather 
than surrender. 

In the Apocryphal Books of the Maccabees we have a detailed 
account of the heroic way in which the Jews met this merciless 
persecution. One remarkable effect of the sufferings which the 
pious Jews endured, was the growth in brightness and strength of 



262 'ALL HAIL' 

the Messianic hope. At first they died like martyrs without resis- 
tance, but at last a leader was found in Mattathias, the head of a 
priestly family in the town of Modin in Judaea. He slew a Jew 
who was about to offer a heathen sacrifice, levelled the heathen altar, 
and fled with his sons to the mountains. Joined by others, he and 
his family began a religious war against the heathen oppressors. 
One of his sons was Judas, called 'the hammer' (that is probably 
the meaning of the word Maccabee), who became the leader of the 
patriots. Now began a great war between the vast Syrian armies 
sent to put down the revolt, and the little band of Jews who were 
fighting for religious liberty, or death. The Syrians advancing to- 
wards Jerusalem, which was held by a Syrian garrison, were de- 
feated by Judas Maccabseus at Emmaus. Next year, Lysias, the 
Syrian general, came back to Judaea with another large army, and 
was met and defeated by Judas at Bethzur, 165 B.C., twenty miles 
south of Jerusalem, and forced to retreat to Antioch. 

Judas now occupied Jerusalem, and while he sent troops to at- 
tack the Syrians in the citadel, restored the Temple worship 
after solemn purification of the holy place. After the death of 
Antiochus, Lysias returned to Jerusalem, and Judas with his little 
force was defeated by an immense Syrian army, and Jerusalem was 
besieged. Defence seemed hopeless ; but Lysias, finding that Philip, 
who had been left guardian to the young king Antiochus the Fifth, 
was marching against him, offered to grant religious liberty to the 
Jews in return for their submission. The offer was accepted by 
the Chasidim, but not by Judas, who continued the struggle. The 
Syrians occupied Jerusalem, and Nicanor, with a large army, was 
sent against Judas by Demetrius the First, successor of young 
Antiochus. Judas defeated Nicanor near Beth-horon, and nailed 
his head and hand to the fortifications of Jerusalem. Judas now 
determined to crush out Hellenism completely and to restore the 
Jewish State. He sought foreign support, sending an embassy to 
Rome, with which he made an alliance, and the Roman republic 
threatened the Syrians with war unless they retired from Judaea. 
But before the Roman decree arrived, a fresh Syrian invasion over- 
powered Judas. His army was defeated and the Jewish leader was 
slain. So the great struggle ended. The main object of the Mac- 
cabaean revolt, religious liberty, was gained. And if the Jewish 
State passed under the suzerainty of Syria again, they were directly 
under the government of their own high priest. In 153 B.C. Jona- 
than, the brother of Judas Maccabaeus, was acknowledged the high 
priest by the king of Syria. In 142 B.C. Simon, the brother of Jona- 
than, forced the Syrian troops to retire from the citadel, and in the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 263 

next year the whole Jewish nation declared Simon high priest, cap- 
tain, and governor (i Maccabees xiv. 27-47). 

The Asmonaean or Maccabaean family retained the high priest- 
hood, and in the year 65 b.c. the Romans, who Judas Maccabaeus 
had invited so long before, arrived in Palestine represented by 
Scaurus, lieutenant of Pompey. Pompey himself followed the next 
year, and, enraged at the bad faith of one of the Jewish leaders, 
besieged Jerusalem and took it after three months' siege, 63 B.C. 
He acted with much moderation, and although he went into the 
Holy of Holies, he left the treasures of the Temple untouched. It 
was just eighty years since the independence of Judsea had been at- 
tained. And now the country came finally under the sway of Rome, 
Scaurus, Pompey's lieutenant, being left in charge of Judaea, as a 
part of Syria. 

From the time of Judas Maccabaeus, the Jews had held their 
own for nearly one hundred years. The national pride had grown 
with national success. The bitterness of now becoming a mere por- 
tion of the Roman province of Syria, under the orders of the Roman 
Pro-consul of that province, was extreme, and the people who had 
tasted the sweets of liberty were never able long to content them- 
selves and live quietly under the rule of Rome. After the death of 
Pompey, Julius Caesar gave to the Jews many privileges which 
Pompey had denied. He freed them' from supporting Roman sol- 
diers, reduced their tribute during the Sabbatical year, and gave 
them Joppa. The consequence was that the Jews most sincerely 
sorrowed for Caesar's death, when he was assassinated 44 b.c 
When Antony came to Antioch after the defeat of Brutus and 
Cassius at Philippi, 42 b.c, a deputation of Jews waited on him to 
accuse the sons of Antipater, Herod in particular. Antony, how- 
ever, appointed Herod to a tetrarchy, from which he was driven by 
a revolt to seek help and redress at Rome. In the year 40 B.C. 
Herod, who had been appointed king by Antony and Octavius, went 
back to Palestine to claim his kingdom. When Herod died, after 
a period of thirty-seven years, he left his kingdom among his three 
sons, having obtained from Augustus during a visit to Rome the 
right of disposing of it. To Archelaus he left Judaea with the title 
of king. To Herod Antipas he left Galilee and Peraea with the title 
of tetrach. To Philip he left the north-east part of his kingdom 
with the title of tetrarch. 

We have already closed our Old Testament, which we have 
learned to understand, to reverence, and to love. But before con- 
sidering the main subject of the New Testament, which is the com- 
ing of Christ to the world— or, in other words, the Incarnation of 



264 ' ALL HAIL ' 

God in Man — we must trace out, as far as so mysterious a subject 
can be followed up, the preparation for that Incarnation, the educa- 
tion of the world to receive the coming of Christ. 

Man has had, and still has, many religions, all apparently origin- 
ating in a primitive revelation interpreted by the distinctive human 
faculty for perceiving the Divine Presence sometimes called spirit- 
ual sight. This faculty may well have wakened into life under the 
touch of God working through the stimulus of natural phenomena, 
such as the inspiring sight of the dawn, which, according to Max 
Miiller, first gave life in man to the idea of worship as men gazed 
on the great sight and felt it to be the Infinite made visible. Still, 
all attempts to trace the beginnings of religion are unsatisfactory-, 
for our own nature remains a mystery, and a mystery, too, though 
a certainty like our own existence, is man's relation to the mystery 
of mysteries — God. It is true wisdom to remember that our finite 
minds cannot comprehend the Infinite Being, and the words of the 
Psalmist are as true to-day as when they were first uttered: 'Such 
knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain 
unto it.' 

Still, if we cannot know fully the Infinite God we can know Him 
in part; we can see in a mirror dimly (the mirror of nature and 
human life) the vision of the Most High, and can look forward with 
faith and hope to seeing Him face to face hereafter. The study in 
recent years of the many religions of the ancient world points to 
the fact that all men in some degree are seekers after God, and that 
their seeking is met by a progressive Revelation through human 
experience which God seems to give in exact measure to man's 
capacity to receive it — a capacity which is weakened by sin and 
strengthened by righteousness in accordance with our Lord's ilium 
inating saying : 'Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see 
God.' That there was a real seeking after God in the ancient 
religions, and that some knowledge, however imperfect, rewarded 
that seeking; that the Revelation to the Jews was not an isolated 
experience but a part of a world-wide movement towards God which 
reached its highest in Judaism with its unparalleled continuity of 
inspiration and marvellous expectation of the coming of the Mes- 
siah — that is, of the Incarnation of God in Man — is a widely ac- 
cepted view which has its foundations in Holy Scripture. It is, for 
example, St. Paul's view. He regarded Christianity as the crown 
and completion of all religions, for which all other religions were 
only a preparation — the imperfect visions of truth they contained 
being, like the first grey light of dawn, a growing promise of the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 265 

future coming of the perfect day. To this efifect were his words at 
Athens, when he pointed to the religious heathen as feeling after an 
unknown God: 'Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him de- 
clare I unto you.' He went on to base his appeal to the Athenians 
on the great foundation truth expressed by two of their Stoic poets 
— Aratus and Cleomenes, 'for we are also his offspring,' thus giving 
an illustration of the providential preparation for the Revelation 
of the Father in Christ which is a central part of the Gospel. 
He found such a preparation among the cultivated Epicureans and 
Stoics, who heard him on Mars Hill. He found it also among the 
rude nature-worshippers at Lystra. He held, as he taught at Lys- 
tra, that God had never left himself without witness, and that even 
Natural Religion had given men some knowledge of God's loving- 
kindness, and so prepared them for the full Revelation in Christ 
that God is love. 

Still more definite are the opening words of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews : 'God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake 
in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last 
daj^s spoken unto us by his Son.' 

That was the great event for which its gradually developing re- 
ligious consciousness was intended to prepare the human race. That 
was the predestined completion and crown of the mysterious and 
manifold evolution of religion in the great religions of the past. 
'He that should come' came and satisfied fully in His Divine offer- 
ing up of Himself to God all the aspirations of the many-thoughted 
mind of man which separately and fragmentarily had found ex- 
pression in other religions, but in Christianity found expression in 
perfect unison and rounded completeness. Thus the ancient re- 
ligions of the world prepared mankind for the Advent. Stimulat- 
ing the longings for a fuller Revelation they developed the capacity 
to receive it when it came. 

The supreme example of this preparation was the progressive 
Revelation granted to the Hebrews, which we need only touch upon 
here as we have read so much about it in the Old Testament. It 
m.ay be added that the Jewish Dispersion supplied favourable seed- 
plots throughout the Roman Empire for the growth of the Christian 
Church in the nucleus of Jews and proselytes established in ever 
considerable city, and equipped for the right ordering of a common 
religious and moral life which the inspired library of the Old 
Testament. But while the disciplining of the Jews by the teaching 
of Prophet and Psalmist and Lawgiver was the chief preparation, 
and supplied the favourable spiritual atmosphere not only in Pales- 



266 'ALL HAIL' 

tine but throughout the Roman world in which the religion of the 
Incarnation could live and grow, the preparation of the world for 
Christ by other ancient religions must not be forgotten. 

One of these was the Assyro-Babylonian religion. The deep 
sense of sin, the consciousness of God's transcendent majesty, and 
the longing for God's forgiveness which labours of archaeologists 
have unearthed in the tablet-books of this religion, reveal a very 
real seeking after God, a valuable preparation towards finding God 
fully and perfectly in Christ. A further preparation may be found 
in a Divine Mediator between God and man — Marduk or Mero- 
dach, 'the Holy Son,' as he was called, the Redeemer of fallen man, 
a wonderful foreshadowing of the historical Messiah among the race 
out of which, be it remembered, Abraham came. Another example 
of this world-wide preparation for the Advent was the ancient 
Egyptian religion, in which a very elevated moral teaching had 
issued in the idea of a final Judgment, at which every one would 
have to give account of his words as well as his deeds. More 
wonderful even than the anticipation of Christ in Assyrian Mero- 
dach was the similar anticipation in Egyptian Osiris, who lived on 
earth to befriend man; who died and rose again, the firstfruits of 
the grave; whose earthly life was a model for mankind, the mystic 
union with whom was the aspiration of every man of piety ; who was 
the ruler of the world of the dead, and the merciful Judge before 
whom all must appear. We can only find space to mention here 
the Persian religion and its great teacher, Zoroaster, saying a word, 
however, about Mithraism, the kindred worship of Mithras, the 
old Aryan god of light, the personification of the sun, the Mediator 
between man and the unknown God, whose worship was brought to 
Rome by some of Pompey's prisoners, where it became extremely 
popular, especially in the Roman army, and spread even to distant 
Britain, and till the fourth century held its own against Christianity. 
The close resemblances of Mithraism' to the Christian faith, its 
highly organized priesthood and sacramental system, give it a claim 
to be a part of the providential preparation for the religion of Christ 
which took its place. 

The religions of Greece and Rome played their part, too, in this 
universal preparation ; and it may be remembered that Socrates, the 
greatest personality of his time, as represented by Plato in the 
'Laws,' saw only one hope for man to escape from the bondage of 
a specially degrading sin — namely, the coming of some Divine Per- 
son to brand that sin authoritatively as shameful, and give a fresh 
inspiration to the higher life — a hope which, centuries after the death 
of Socrates, was marvellously realised in Jesus Christ. It may be 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 267 

said here that the Greek religion was twofold — or, rather, that there 
were two religions that existed side by side: the popular religion 
of the masses, with its pantheon of deities of very loose morality, 
with their magnificent temples and their statues and their offerings; 
and the spiritual religion — the religion of the chosen few based on 
the unity and spirituality of God, a belief standing at the centre 
of the great Eleusinian mysteries, and mentioned as far back as 
the seventh century b.c. These mysteries did much to educate and 
prepare the minds of the initiated to receive the full Revelation of 
God in Christ. 

This feeling after God and partially finding Him which is to be 
found in more or less degree in all religions is everywhere to be 
regarded as a preparation for Christ, whether it be found in the 
initiated ones of the Eleusinian mysteries or in great thinkers like 
Plato or Aristotle, or in the fitful gleams of natural religion or 
spiritual intuition in the poets. Death was held to be a gain, not an 
evil, by the initiated at Eleusis, and the ressurection of the gods as 
represented at the celebration of the mysteries encouraged the 
hopes of thousands of seeking souls who asked for some comfort- 
ing knowledge from the unseen world. Higher views of the gods 
of Olym.pus developed side by side with the crude, popular view, and 
the myths, particularly the myth of Demeter, the earth-goddess and 
her daughter, Persephone, which was at the foundation of the 
Eleusinian mysteries, was spiritualised and applied to the destiny 
of the soul in the unseen world. The myths of Plato, again — the 
story of Er, the son of Arminius, in particular — convey profound 
spiritual truths, and were a part of the preparation for Christianity 
as the fasting, purification, and sacramental meal at the mysteries at 
Eleusis were a helpful preparation for the great Christian sacra- 
ment. Gratitude to the gods was the chief sentiment fostered by 
the many joyous festivals of the Greek religion, and must have 
had some effect in preparing the minds of the peoples of the Roman 
Empire for the fuller revelation of the joyousness and thankfulness 
of primitive Christianity. The Roman religion was largely a State 
affair, and was characterised by externality and formality. Hav- 
ing little or no mythology of its own, it borrowed largely from the 
Greek. Reverence and obedience were the chief virtues inculcated, 
and this attitude towards the gods was to some limited extent a 
preparation for the salutary discipline of the organized Christian 
Church. 

Furthermore, a part in this preparation, a foreshadowing of 
Christ, like the anticipation of Christ in Merodach or Osiris, was 
played among our ancestors in the Teutonic branch of the Arvan 



268 ' ALL HAIL ' 

race by Baldur, the god of light, who stood for all that was gentle 
and pure and good to his Northern worshippers, to whom he was 
known as Baldur the White, and when Baldur's worshippers re- 
ceived Christianity the new object of their worship was called 
the White Christ. But among these old Teutons probably the most 
important preparation for Christianity was the high ideal of morals, 
the high estimation in which bravery, manliness, uprightness, and 
purity were held, and the reverence shown to the aged and to women 
and children, together with a well-established and elevated standard 
of self-respect. A high ethical ideal, in short, prepared these North- 
ern Teutons to accept Christ, in whom that dimly shadowed ideal 
of perfect courage and perfect goodness was found to be realised. 
The shadowy lineaments of divinity in the White Baldur prepared 
them for the radiant features of the White Christ, in whom the 
transfiguration of humanity into something higher than human 
visibly took place — what the Apostle calls 'the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' 

All these religions, and many more, have passed away. They 
were 'not that Light,' but were 'sent to bear witness of that Light/ 
But there are other ancient religions, long-established before Christ 
came, which still seek to satisfy the needs of their many millions of 
adherents. Such is Hinduism, with its anticipations of the In- 
carnation, according to which the god Vishnu is reported to come 
down in answer to prayer, and to set things right on earth. Such 
is Buddhism, which arose in Northern India in the fifth century 
before Christ, its founder, Buddha (i.e., one freed from existence 
by knowledge of truth), being probably a real personage, Prince 
Siddartha, the greatest perhaps of the sons of God after the Only 
Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, whose Sonship is altogether unique 
and supreme. The worship of so sweet and self-renouncing a 
soul as Buddha must have done something to prepare the minds of 
his votaries for Christ. Such, again, is Confucianism, which arose 
in China centuries before Christ, its founder being Confucius (Kung- 
fu-tsze — that is, the Master Kung), a system of practical morals 
rather than of religious aspirations, but a teaching which, with 
that of Lao-tsze (Taoism), who flourished about the same date as 
Confucius, still shares with Buddhism the spiritual rule of the vast 
population of China. 

All these religious systems were fully established centuries before 
the coming of Christ. Though their founders were great and good 
men, these religions have failed to supply the growing needs of 
humanity, and have yielded to the law of decay, and China's religion 
to-day is practically materialism mixed with a low form of supersti- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 269 

tion, a dread of swarming evil spirits which depresses and degrades 
human life, while Buddhism has become practical atheism — a religion 
of despairing pessimism in no way satisfying the needs and hopes 
of its many-millioned flock; so too popular Hinduism, originally 
the pure worship of elementary powers, has degenerated into a 
grotesque polytheism (H'anuman, the monkey-god; Ganesh, the 
elephant-god, are among the divinities) which has no elevating 
effect on the moral life, though the Brahmo-Somaj (Church of the 
Only God) Movement, with its noble theism, shows the aspiration 
towards religious reform in India. 

We have seen that many ancient religions have passed away ut- 
terly, and other ancient religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and 
Confucianism are more or less decadent or moribund. All have 
failed completely to supply the needs and elevate the lives of their 
adherents. 

Christianity is entirely unlike these decaying cults, inasmuch as it 
is not only infinitely superior to any of them, but it contains in 
itself the principle of perpetual progress, the principle of undying 
vitality. In Christianity the Infinite Being revals Himself to finite 
beings in terms of the finite. Thus it is at once intelligible to 
man, and able to supply all his needs from a source of light and 
love which is absolutely inexhaustible. To the Christian the whole 
universe and all that is in it is a manifestation of God reaching 
its highest in the perfect and Divine humanity of Christ. Higher 
manifestation there cannot be, for in the words of Christ, 'He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father,' All the essentials of religion, 
isolated fragments of which are found in other religions, are found 
combined in their full completeness in Christianity. Primitive 
Christianity, speaking through St. Paul, already saw the Incarna- 
tion of God in Jesus Christ completed in all mankind, viewed as one 
colossal being, the Catholic or universal Church, comprehending all 
the inhabitants of the world as depicted in one body, with Christ as 
Head, 'till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the know- 
ledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect (R.V. full grown) man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (Ephe- 
sians iv. verse 13). 

This building-up of the body of Christ till it consists of all man- 
kind was an idea constantly before St. Paul's eyes in the first cen- 
tury, when the building-up had only begun, and it ought to be con- 
tinually before our eyes in the twentieth century, when the building- 
up is far advanced towards completion. St. Paul's idea gives the 
true note of finality to Christianity. When its object is attained, 
when its work is completed, there will be no more work left to do. 



270 ' ALL HAIL ' 

Thus all other religions are a preparation for it, for all other re- 
ligions pass away, and Christianity, as was pre-ordained by God, 
takes their place. This distinguishing characteristic of Christianity 
is written in large letters across the history of nineteen centuries, 
and never larger than on the history that is being made to-day. 

But the expectation of that supreme coming of God to man in the 
coming of Christ, though the chief, was not the only preparation for 
that coming. The Roman Empire itself, the establishment of which 
was accomplished by Augustus, was a great and effective prepara- 
tion for the rapid acceptance of the religion of the Incarnation, which 
offered to all men in Christ union in a universal brotherhood under 
the universal fatherhood of God. The idea of the universal union 
of humanity had begun, as we have seen, with Alexander's Em- 
pire. In the Roman Empire a vaster unity was effected, which com- 
prehended the more civilised portions of three continents — Asia, 
Africa, and Europe — and made the Mediterranean Sea a Roman 
lake, while the Pax Romana, or internal peace of the Empire, was 
maintained not only by Roman arms, but more effectively by the 
justice of Roman government and Roman law, which welded to- 
gether in common contentment the subject-peoples of the provinces. 
That contentment was so deep-seated that the nation spontaneously 
saluted Augustus, as the maker of universal prosperity and univer- 
sal happiness, by the proud title of the Father of his country, a 
title which was afterwards solemnly and unanimously conferred 
by the Senate in B.C. 2 — that is, a few years after our Lord's birth, 
according to the now generally accepted chronology. The Roman 
Empire, too, was a fit cradle for the infancy of a new religion, for 
it had learned to tolerate the religions of subject-peoples even in 
the metropolis, until the inevitable struggle between the universal or 
Catholic Church and the universal Empire began. Thus, at the 
time of our Lord's birth, peace and contentment reigned over the 
gigantic Empire in which so many nations had been to some extent 
united and trained to the idea of a universal humanity under the 
influence of Roman law. 

Now we have arrived at the time of Our Lord's birth into 
this world. The land appointed by Our Heavenly Father for the 
birth of the long-expected Messiah was the very same land we have 
been reading about all the while in the Old Testament, the land we 
know as Palestine. No scattered pastoral population inhabited 
Palestine at the time of Our Lord's birth. The cities were numerous 
in Galilee as well as in Judaea, and full of Greeks as well as Jews. 
The people spoke two languages, Aramaic and Greek. It is evident 
that Greek was exceedingly well known, for nearly all Our Lord's 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 271 

quotations from the Old Testament are made from the Greek Ver- 
sion. The great expense of Hebrew manuscripts was an additional 
reason for using the Greek Bible, which was comparatively cheap. 

Every available inch of ground in this country was carefully 
cultivated. The population was particularly dense round the Lake 
of Galilee, where there were two hundred villages and three walled 
cities. Boats employed in trade and fishing thronged the lake. The 
life of this population, actively engaged in argriculture or trade, was 
seriously occupied with religion. The Pharisees, that is, the Separ- 
atists, were the distinctively religious party. They were scrup- 
ulously careful about the external observances of religion. But 
their hard, self-righteous spirit had little in common with the God 
of Love. They were the dominant party at Jerusalem. The Scribes, 
or Students of the Law, were closely connected with the Pharisees. 
They had, to a great extent, taken the place of the Priests, and they 
took the upper hand in Galilee, as the Pharisees did in Jerusalem. 
The Sadducees were members of priestly families, of aristocratic 
race, and kept the high priesthood in their own hands, and often 
succeeded in leading the Pharisee majority in the Sanhedrin. 
Religion was to the Sadducees a secondary matter, their main 
object being worldly position and power. 

In our Lord's time, religion was in a bad way in Jerusalem, 
under the combined influence of Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, 
yet there existed in country parts a considerable number of pious 
people, who studied the Scriptures devotionally, and lived deeply 
religious lives. Such were Joseph and Mary, Zacharias and Eliza- 
beth, Simeon and Anna. These were the best product of the study 
of the Jewish Bible, and from similar material Christ's disciples 
were chosen and the Christian Church was formed. The general 
Expectation of the Messiah, who was to establish God's Kingdom 
on the earth, a Kingdom however that was to be formed exclusively 
of Jews, was one of the most striking characteristics of the life 
of Palestine at that time. 

We have said something already about the long and gradual 
growth of this Expectation, developed and fostered by the utter- 
ances of the Prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. But the erroneous 
view that it was to be an earthly kingdom and to consist solely of 
Jews had been intensified by the temporary realisation which had 
been reached through the national greatness under Judas Macca- 
baeus. Thus, although the words of the Book of Daniel were re- 
membered as a prophecy of the Messianic Kingdom, the universal 
nature of that Kingdom of God was forgotten, and a narrower 
national view took its place. A proud nation, which had by itself 



272 ' ALL HAIL ' 

broken the power of Syria in the comparatively recent days of 
Antiochus Epiphanes, could ill brook the iron hand of Rome, and 
still less the bitter contempt for the Jew, which the Roman official 
made no attempt to conceal. 

The vanguard which headed the great body of the people eager to 
be delivered from Roman rule was known as the Zealots. One 
of this party, Simon the Zealot, was an Apostle of our Lord, and 
very likely joined Him with the idea that He would set up the 
standard of national independence and drive out the Romans (Mat- 
thew X. verse 4; Mark iii. verse 18; Luke vi. verse 15; Acts i. 
verse 13). But while the imagination of the mass of the people 
was entirely captured by this material conception of the Messianic 
Kingdom, others, the poor in spirit, had attained by a pious life to 
the blessedness of spiritual insight, by which they perceived God's 
salvation to be a spiritual thing. Such were the two mentioned in 
Luke ii. verses 25-38. 

Others there were like a flock waiting for a shepherd to lead 
them into green pastures, with a dim, unconscious yearning of suf- 
fering helplessness ; the sick and the maimed, the halt and the 
blind, were waiting for some help from on high, as the palsied 
man did for the troubling of the water. Multitudes of such suf- 
ferers needed help, but none knew that the Divine Helper was 
drawing near. Where was the Messianic Kingdom? Where was 
the looked-for Messiah ? How long He seemed to tarry ! How 
many thirsting and hungering souls were aching with deferred hope 
and unsatisfied longing ! Almighty God, am I abandoned ? Was I 
created in Thine Image? Is this what life means? Why am I 
here? Whither am I going? Oh, the sighs and groans and tears 
and sorrows that must have found their way on high ! 'Be not 
afraid. Unto us is born a Saviour.' The answer comes back : 
'Only believe.' 

And what about this Saviour of the World? Where do we 
find Him? How can we serve Him? At once let us go to our 
New Testament, and hear the joyful news. 

As a whole the New Testament — that is, the New Covenant — is 
far shorter than the Old Testament, but it is far more important, 
for it records the supreme revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It 
tells us the story of our Blessed Lord's life on earth. It gives us 
in His own words His Divine teaching. It puts before us His life 
as our example to follow which must ever be the aim of our keenest 
and hardest endeavours. 

To begin with, on opening our New Testament, the names of 
four men arrest our immediate attention : these are the names of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 273 

the four Evangelists. 'Evangel' is taken from a word which means 
'good news' in Greek. 'Gospel' stands for Evangel in English, and 
and comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'Godspell,' meaning 'God-story.' 
As you may observe, a part of the word 'Evangel' is 'angel' — a 
messenger sent by God to tell us tidings which He desires us to 
know. The good tidings are of God in Jesus Christ reconciling 
the world to Himself. The names of the Evangelists are Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, each of whom is honoured with the prefix 
of Saint. All four accounts are inspired by God, but each is 
marked by the differing personality and purpose of its writer. The 
Gospel according to St. Matthew probably represents the Gospel as 
it was taught by St. Matthew, and it was addressed especially 
to Jews, and sought to convince them that Jesus was their long- 
looked-for Messiah. To St. Matthew, as to St. Mark and St. 
Luke, Jesus is both the Messiah and the Redeemer of mankind. 

The writings of St. Matthew take for granted the Jewish belief 
in the Old Testament. He quotes the Old Testament specially for 
the identification of Jesus with the Messiah. Also he gives prom- 
inence to Christ's idea of the Kingdom of Heaven and His Gospel, 
as well as to the importance of recognising Jesus to be the Mes- 
sianic King. The service of the kingdom consists in conduct, and 
in the last day man is judged by his conduct, as is shown in the 
great parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew xxv. He puts 
special stress on the Parables of the Kingdom, such as the Sower, 
the Wheat and the Tares, the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, the Hid- 
den Treasure, the Pearl of Great Price, the Net. He also lays 
special stress on the laws of the Kingdom of God, in what we call 
the Sermon on the Mount. The Gospel according to St. Matthew 
was written probably shortly before a.d. 70. The name Matthew 
signifies 'gift of God.' The special value of this Gospel is that it 
gives the fullest record of our Lord's sayings. 

Our second Gospel is St. Mark's. This Gospel is seen by 
internal evidence to be the earliest. It is the basis of the Gospels 
of St. Matthew and St. Luke. When we compare it with them, we 
find nearly the whole of St. Mark either in St. Matthew or in St. 
Luke, and the larger part in both. The original source of St. 
Mark's Gospel is believed, for excellent reasons, to have been St. 
Peter. Papias assures us that St. Mark wrote down the words and 
acts of our Saviour as St. Peter delivered them in his preaching, 
and the second Gospel may be fairly called — as it was in the early 
centuries of Christianity — 'the Memories of Peter.' When we ex- 
amine the Gospel itself we find that its contents are evidently the 
record of an eye-witness, often specially to be attributed to St 



274 'ALL HAIL' 

Peter, as the account of the Transfiguration and the raising of 
Jairus's daughter, and thus bear out the primitive tradition. We 
are told that St. Mark was with St. Paul when he returned to 
Antioch with Barnabas. There he met Manaen, Herod's foster 
brother, from whom, no doubt, was obtained the striking account, 
with all its graphic details, of how Herod was worked upon by the 
daughter of Herodias and entrapped in the meshes of his own rash 
promise, till he ordered the murder of John the Baptist, and the 
head of the great Prophet was presented in a dish to the daughter 
of vindictive Herodias. St. Mark chronicles our Lord's actions 
rather than His words. St. Mark wrote for Roman readers. Wit- 
ness his many Latinisms, and his very full explanations of Jewish 
words and customs. Comparatively few of our Lord's sayings are 
recorded, and only four of the parables. The interest centres in 
Jesus Himself, in His feelings as well as in His doings. 

St. Luke was a Gentile Christian, a cultivated man who wrote 
good Greek, and was a critical and able historian. The date of 
his Gospel is probably not later than a.d. 8o, and may be a.d. 6i, 
during St. Paul's imprisonment in Rome. He accompanied St. 
Paul on his missionary journeys; and that companionship enabled 
him to write the Acts of the Apostles, and helped to supply him with 
materials for his Gospel when at Caesarea and Jerusalem; for we 
know that St. Paul and St. Luke were together during St. Paul's 
imprisonment at Caesarea, and afterwards at Rome. We know little 
about St. Luke's own life. He is too modest to mention himself. 
He addresses his Gospel, as his later work, the Acts, to a friend, 
Theophilus, a fellow Christian, addressed as 'most excellent,' a title 
which indicates a Roman of high rank — in fact, probably one of 
the knights. St. Luke represents Christ specially as the Saviour 
of all mankind, not merely as the Messiah of the Jews. St. Luke, 
with the thoughtfulness and sympathy of a humane physician, 
dwells on the fact that Jesus was the compassionate Healer of all 
suffering and illness, bringing out strongly Christ's human char- 
acter. The labour that St. Luke spent in compiling his Gospel, 
which is mentioned in his preface, is evidenced by the fact that per- 
haps half his book consists of fresh matter, which he does not share 
with the other Evangelists. Not only does he supply a priceless 
list of parables not recorded elsewhere, headed by the greatest of 
all the parables, the Prodigal Son, and containing also the great par- 
able of the Good Samaritan, but besides several miracles peculiar to 
himself, he preserves in his first two chapters the story of our Lord's 
Conception and Birth, as told from the Blessed Virgin's point of 
view, the weeping over Jerusalem, the blood-sweat in Gethsemane, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 275 

the trial by Herod, the last words to the women of Jerusalem', the 
conversion of the penitent thief and the words to him from the 
Cross, the first words and the last words from the Cross, the appear- 
ance at Emmaus, the fullest account of the appearance in the Up- 
per Room the evening of the Resurrection. He seems to have 
been in touch, probably when he was with St. Paul at Jerusalem, 
with our Lord's mother, and with Joanna, the wife of Chuza, 
Herod's steward. The feeling with which women of all classes re- 
garded our Lord is dwelt on with special sympathy by St. Luke ; 
for instance, he alone records the lament of the women of Jerusa- 
lem as our Lord was led away to be crucified and our Lord's words 
to them. 

St. Luke's Gospel has, not without reason, been called 'The 
Gospel of Womanhood.' We owe St. Luke a great debt of grati- 
tude for the priceless record which he alone has preserved, the most 
beautiful of the parables, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis, the 
Benedictus, the story of the Annunciation ; and he and St. Mark 
alone record the Ascension. St. Luke's is the most human-hearted 
of the Gospels, the most sympathetic, and so he occupies himself 
specially with the ministry of women. Whether St. Luke personally 
knew our Lord during His earthly ministry we are not told, but 
in the wonderful account of the appearance at Emmaus the graphic 
details of the eye-witness are manifest, and it has been conjectured 
that one of the two disciples was Luke himself. 

The fourth Evangelist, St. John, was our Lord's closest friend and 
most inseparable companion, 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.' As 
one of the inner circle of three he was with our Lord at the rais- 
ing of Jairus' daughter, at the Transfiguration, during the bloody 
sweat at Gethsemane, and kept close to Him in the High Priest's 
palace and saw Him condemned for blasphemy by the Sanhedrin 
and buffeted and contemptuously ill-used by them afterwards. Fin- 
ally, he saw Him nailed to the Cross, and was chosen to receive 
the dying bequest of his Lord's mother that he might be to her 
as a son. He was, when young, a man of such fiery and impetuous 
nature that our Lord named him and his brother 'Sons of thunder.' 
Later, Love was the keynote of the teaching of this 'Apostle of 
Love.' The other Gospels are true photographs of our Lord as 
He walked on earth. St. John's is a great portrait painted by one 
to whom the abysmal depths of the Divine Personality were 
opened by the key of intense sympathy and love. 

Tradition tells us he was the last of the twelve Apostles to die, 
and he is believed to have died at Ephesus not many years after the 
close of the first century. His Gospel is supplementary, and sup- 



276 'ALL HAIL' 

plies what is wanting in tlie other Gospels, which he was able to 
do, as this Gospel was written very much later, probably about the 
year 90 or 95 a.d. His is the most spiritual Gospel — a masterpiece 
of mysticism. The purpose of the contents of his Gospel is, in his 
own words: 'But these are written, that ye might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might 
have life through his name.' 

He records our Lord's conversations and discourses, especially 
those at the closing of His ministry, with a fulness that is marvel- 
lous, considering the length of time before they were written down. 
The accuracy of his local colour in describing life in Palestine, 
and the vividness of his word-pictures of our Lord's mighty 
works, plainly betoken an eye-witness. St. John represents the 
Saviour to us in His Godhead. He had a grasp of the deep mys- 
tery of His Lord's Deity not approached by any of the other 
Evangelists. He also understood more completely than the rest 
the meaning of the Lord's discourses, and of the miracles, which 
he calls signs. St. John lays stress on the necessity of a new birth. 
St. John's insight into our Lord's character is unique. Unique, too, 
is his power of expressing the deepest thoughts in the simplest 
words. This power distinguishes the Epistles, as well as the Gos- 
pel that bears his name — e.g., in the Epistles, 'God is love, and he 
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him ;' in the 
Gospel, 'I and the Father are one' (R.V.), 'Before Abraham was, 
I am,' 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' 'I am the 
Resurrection and the Life.' Of the Apostle's deep-thoughted sim- 
plicity it may be said the style is the man himself, and such a per- 
sonality made him his Lord's best interpreter. 

St. John tells us in the Book of the Revelation that he was ban- 
ished to Patmos, an island in the ^gean, where he received the 
Revelation. Later he ruled the Church at Ephesus. A touching- 
story is related of him. Jerome tells us how, in his extreme old 
age, when unable to preach, he used to be carried into church on 
a litter, and instead of a sermon used to address the congregation 
in these words : 'Little children, love one another.' When some 
of the people objected, asking why he kept repeating the same 
thing, he replied : 'Because it is the Lord's command. If only that 
is done, it is enough.' 

Another story is to be found in Cassian. It shows that the great 
Apostle of Love did not content himself with loving men only, but 
that his love reached to and embraced the humblest animal. He 
used, says Cassian, to play with a tame partridge in his old age, and 
ivhen blamed for this as unbecoming frivolity, he replied : 'The 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 277 

bow cannot be always bent.' An anecdote which illustrates the 
strength of his love of souls is told by Clement of Alexandria. It 
tells how he went into an ill-famed forest to win back a disciple 
who had relapsed and become one of a body of bandits there. The 
whole vehemence of character which had wished to call down fire 
on the inhospitable Samaritans, and had called forth his Lord's 
rebuke, showed itself in his old age, when, according to the story, 
he refused to remain under the same roof with the heretic Cerin- 
thus. Qf St. John's theology a few words may here be said. That 
theology may be summed up in three sayings, which are very 
simple in language, very profound in thought: 'God is spirit' (not 
*a spirit,' as in A.V.), 'God is light,' 'God is love.' 

As we have seen, the New Testament begins with the four 
Gospels. The first three — Matthew, Mark, and Luke, known as the 
Synoptics — with their general photographic view of the deeds and 
words of Jesus, are supplemented by the more profound study of 
St. John, which deals with the heresies that had arisen by the time 
this latest Gospel was written by the effective method of setting 
forth in many ways the true doctrine of the Divine Person. Thus, 
the pre-existence is affirmed in the opening lines: 'In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were 
made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was 
made.' Nor is it only in such passages as this that the Divinity of 
our Lord is revealed. Their intellectual statement of the high 
doctrine of the Incarnation is supported by St. John's simple 
records of the sacred humanity that serve to life the veil from the 
indwelling Deity. An example of this is the treatment of the story 
of the raising of Lazarus, which is peculiar to St. John. A still 
more remarkable passage of another kind, by which the veil is 
taken away from that Holy of Holies of our Lord's inmost soul, 
where He holds communion with the Father, is our Lord's High 
Priestly prayer after the institution of the Great Sacrament, and 
shortly before He went forth with His disciples to Gethsemane to 
the agony which was to usher in the supreme sacrifice of the 
Cross to which He consecrated Himself at once as sacrifice and 
sacrificing priest in those self-revealing words beginning: 'Father, 
the hour is come; glorify the Son, that thy Son also may glorify 
thee : as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should 
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this 
is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the 
earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And 



278 'ALL HAIL' 

now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the 
glory which I had with thee before the world was.' The purpose 
of St. John's Gospel is the purpose of the whole New Testament — 
namely, to inspire such living faith in Christ in his readers that 
it may issue in Christ-like life in their thoughts, words, and deeds 
in the whole of their activity, internal as well as external. 

The central figure of St. John's Gospel is also the central figure, 
the supreme subject, of the New Testament, our Blessed Lord 
Himself — ^the ultimate purpose of the whole universe, in whom 
the many-centuried evolution of life finds its destined fulfilment, 
in whom dwelt the fulness of the God-head, the 'Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world,' to use the pregnant and inspir- 
ing words of St. John in his book of The Revelation. 

The old creation is the subject of the first words of the Old 
Testament, the first words of the Book of Genesis : 'In the be- 
ginning God created the heaven and the earth.' The new creation 
is the subject of the first words of St. John's Gospel: 'In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 

was God All things were made by him, and without 

him was not anything made that was made. In him was life ; 
and the life was the light of men.' The whole of this marvellous 
preface to the fourth Gospel, of which we have given some of the 
opening words, is the most profound expression, even in Holy 
Scripture, of the central doctrine of the Incarnation, the revela- 
tion or unveiling to the mind of man of all that he needs and can 
receive of the knowledge of the infinite mystery of the being of 
God. Thus this preface to the fourth Gospel may be regarded as 
the proper preface to the whole New Testament, which is best un- 
derstood in the far-reaching light of its illuminating words. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Gospels (the Annunciation and the Nativity). 

In the first chapter of St. Luke, verses 26 and 27, we read: *And 
in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a 
city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin .... and the 
virgin's name was Mary,' whose parents, according to apocryphal 
accounts, were Joachim and Anna. 

We have at this place another beautiful picture to look at. The 
subject is that about which we are reading — the Annunciation. 
This means, an announcement of news in general, and Gabriel's mes- 
sage from God to the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular. 

The picture is by our much-beloved Fra Angelico. The Virgin 
Mary was probably at this supreme moment of her destiny in her 
parents' house. We love to think that God's beautiful firmament 
was not shut out, so that Gabriel, in his downward flight from 
heaven, could easily reach the Holy Virgin praying within or sitting 
in the portico of her dwelling, as the painter represents her, 
enjoying on this memorable occasion God's invigorating fresh air, 
scented with perfume from the blossoming shrubs and opening 
flowers. 

We continue reading in the first chapter of St. Luke how the 
angel came to her, and addressed this humble-minded maiden, who 
regarded the possibility of being chosen to be the mother of 
the Messiah as something too good to be true. St. Luke i. verse 
28: 'Hair (this means, all be well with thee), said the angel, 'thou 
that art highly favoured (margin R.V. endued with grace), the 
Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.' This angelic 
salutation came as an overwhelming honour to one of such deep 
piety as Mary. Therefore we can readily understand that when 
Mary saw the angel Gabriel, 'she was troubled at his saying, and 
cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And 
the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found 
favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, 
and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall 
be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest : and the Lord 
God shall give unto Him the throne of his father David: and he 

279 



28o ' ALL HAIL ' 

shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom 
there shall be no end' (verses 29-33). 

Here we have God's own messenger Gabriel, the same angel we 
remember as appearing to Daniel, bringing God's own message 
of promise. Nothing is left in doubt. God promises. God fulfills. 
Mary asked, 'How shall this be ?' Gabriel replies : 'The Holy 
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall 
overshadow thee : therefore also that holy thing which shall be 
born of thee shall be called the 'Son of God.' (That which is to 
be born shall be called holy, the Son of God.' — R.V.) 

I want to draw attention to the golden rays coming from the sky 
straight to Mary. God on high is sending down His Holy Spirit, 
His Holy Ghost, to the Blessed Virgin, just as God in His mercy 
sends down His beneficent sunbeams in order to quicken into life 
all His expectant nature-world. In other words, these golden rays 
symbolise God's Holy Spirit, God's Very Presence with His humble 
handmaid to strengthen and support her to do her part in all the 
wonderful things which were appointed for her. 

In many other of our beloved Italian pictures we see the Holy 
Ghost represented as a pure white dove sent down with a message 
of love. We are told in the Gospel according to St. Matthew that 
Christ saw the heavens open and this holy dove descending on 
Him at His baptism, which was also seen of John the Baptist on 
the same occasion. 

The words, The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee,' 
remind us that God's presence is symbolised by such figures as the 
glory-cloud at the Transfiguration and the Shekinah in the Temple- 
In St. John's Gospel xx. verse 22, we read: 'He (Jesus) breathed 
on them (His disciples), and saith unto them. Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost.' Thus we see the Holy Ghost proceeds from Him whose 
birth on earth was brought about by the same Holy Power which 
united humanity to God then and does so now. 

We are meant to pray earnestly for the Holy Ghost to come to 
us, and we are moreover expected to tune our lives so as to be in 
harmony with the Divine Keynote. 

To remove Mary's difficulties, Gabriel unasked gave a sign : 'And, 
behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in 
her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called 
barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible' (R.V. : 'For 
no word from God shall be void of power') — (Luke i. 36, 2)7)- 

Oh! the wonder of these words, 'with God nothing shall be im- 
possible.' Oh ! the untold blessedness of these words. Oh ! the 
inexpressible consolation of these words. Do they not help us to 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 281 

tijnderstand everything? God the Creator Himself reminds us 
through our experience of His working in the physical, as well as 
in the spiritual world, that nothing with Him is impossible. All 
our perplexities can be made to pass; nay, all our doubts are 
meant to be overcome. We are bidden to believe, and to be faith- 
ful unto Him. Then all is well with us. 

With humility and faith Mary accepted the highest destiny that 
ever was granted by God to any woman, fully conscious of the 
misunderstandings which it involved. 'Behold the handmaid of 
the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel 
departed from her.' This was the sacred moment when the will 
of the holiest of women accepted by free choice the will of Al- 
mighty God, and the Incarnation took place. 

This attitude of the Holy Virgin, her absolute acceptance of 
God's Holy WTill, her high conception of duty, and her unbounded 
faith, show it was 'Hail' indeed with her. This sublime fact in 
the Gospel history stands out for all ages as a thing apart. Blessed 
in truth was Mary among women. 'Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord; be it unto me according to thy word,' are familiar words. 
We are apt to forget the greatness of their significance. The An- 
nunciation certainly took place because it was something very 
important, and was recorded for the same reason. What was 
the purpose of the announcement? Evidently the free consent of 
the Holy Virgin's will to God's will was made possible by the 
Annunciation. In this great miracle, as in other miracles of the 
Gospels, the acceptance of God's will by the human will was re- 
quired. This full acceptance is what is elsewhere called Faith. 
Our Lord always required it in order to work miracles. Wonder- 
ful to say, for the accomplishment of this greatest of miracles, 
which was to bring Salvation in the Person of the Saviour to all 
mankind, the consent of this humble Galilean maiden was required. 
Without her consent the Incarnation would not have taken place 
as it did. 

We are told that 'Mary arose in those days, and went into the 
hill country with haste, into a city of Juda ; and entered into the 

bouse of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth And she 

spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among 
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this 
to me that the mother of my Lord (i.e., the Messiah) ) should come 
to me' (verses 39-43). Elisabeth continued that she too was a 
happy woman, because the Lord had told her that she also was 
going to have a little child. Elisabeth went on to declare that 
'Blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of 



282 'ALL HAIL' 

those things which were told her from the Lord' (verse 45), (or 
'believed that there shall be'— R.M.). 

The Lord never disappoints a single soul that trusts Him. Mary 
now speaks the beautiful words of the Magnificat, full of holy joy 
and thankfulness. St. Luke i. verses 46-55 : 'My soul doth magnify 
the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he 
hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden : for, behold, from 
henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is 
mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name. And 
His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation. 
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud 
in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty 
from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath 
filled the hungry with good things ; and the rich he hath sent empty 
away. He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his 
mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed 
for ever.' 

We spoke awhile ago about the blessed Virgin visiting Zacharias 
and Elizabeth, and we want to know who these kind friends of 
hers were that showed her such true-hearted sympathy. Once 
more it is St. Luke who tells us. Let us first read a very important 
passage in its entirety, just as we find it recorded in chapter i. 
verses 1-4. The contents are of such vital importance that we 
cannot afford to lose one word of it. These words are: 'Foras- 
much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration 
of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as 
they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye- 
witnesses, and ministers of the word ; it seemed good to me (Luke) 
also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very 
first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus' (this 
we remember was a friend of St. Luke, a Roman of equestrian rank 
whom we have already spoken about), 'that thou mightest know the 
certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed' (i.e., 
catechised as a candidate for baptism). 

This is the introduction of St. Luke's Gospel, of the account of 
the Annunciation which we have already given, as well as of the 
rest of the book. St. Luke here goes on to tell his friend, and at 
the same time he tells us in this very day of grace of Our Lord, 
191 1, that during King Herod's reign (who was reigning when 
Christ was born) there was a certain priest called Zacharias. He 
had a wife called Elisabeth, who was of the daughters of Aaron. 
Zacharias and Elisabeth 'were both righteous before God, walking 
in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 283 

St. Luke i. verse 7: 'And they had no child .... And it 
came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in 
the order of his course according to the custom of the priest's 
office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of 
the Lord.' The incense was offered by the priest while alone within 
the Temple, while the other worshippers, priests, and people were 
outside in the courts of the Temple. This burning of incense, which 
was done daily, at dawn and eve, was an outward sign of homage to 
God. A sweet-smelling perfume came forth from the vessel as it 
was swung, the smoke rose, a sort of visible symbol of the invisible 
prayers which ascended to God. 

'And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at 
the time of incense. And there appeared unto him an angel of 
the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And 
when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. 
But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer 
is heard ; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou 
shalt call his name John (i..e., Jehovah is gracious). And thou 
shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 
For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink 
neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy 
Ghost .... And many of the children of Israel shall he 
turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the 
spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the 
children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make 
ready a people prepared for the Lord.' 

We thus see that God had a special message for this child John 
to deliver, as well as important things for him to do. When 
Zacharias heard what the angel Gabriel said, instead of accepting all 
in faith, he began questioning him. This was wrong. The angel 
said (verse 19) : T am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God ; 
and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tid- 
ings.' Gabriel and Michael are the only two angels named both 
in the Old Testament and in the New. It was not right for Zach- 
arias to doubt the words of God's own messenger. Gabriel went on 
to say: 'And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, 
until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou 
believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.' 

In the meanwhile all the people were waiting for Zacharias in 
the outer court of the Temple, 'and marvelled that he tarried so 
long in the temple. And when he came out, he could not speak unto 
them : and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple : 
for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless' (verses 21, 22). 



284 * ALL HAIL ' 

The child was in due time born. All the cousins and neighbours 
heard and saw that the Lord had showed great mercy to Zacharias 
and Elisbaeth. They rejoiced with her. Everybody suggested a 
name to be chosen for this baby, and they though of his fathers 
own name, to be handed down to his son. But there was a differ- 
ence of opinion. The dumb Zacharias 'asked for a writing table,' 
i.e., tablet, and in our picture we see him writing, 'His name is 
John' (verse 63). 

This is what the angel had told him in the Temple. 'And they 
marvelled all. And his mouth opened immediately, and his tongue 
loosed, and he spake, and praised God. And fear came on all that 
dwelt round about them : and all these sayings were noised abroad 
throughout all the hill country of Judaea. And all they that heard 
them laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child 
shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him. And his 
father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, 
saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and 
redeemed his people. And hath raised up an horn of salvation for 
us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of 
his holy prophets, which have been since the world began : that we 
should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that 
hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to 
remember his holy covenant; the oath which he sware to our father 
Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out 
of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness 
and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. And thou, 
child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go 
before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways ; to give knowledge 
of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins^ through 
the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on 
high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and 
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace' 
(St. Luke i. 63-79). 

St. Luke i. verse 80 says: 'And the child (John) grew, and 
waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his 
shewing unto Israel.' In absolute seclusion we see John the Bap- 
tist preparing himself for his mighty mission. Here the question 
presents itself. — whence was the account of the Annunciation ob- 
tained? Evidently from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who alone could 
have given the details of what took place. She is probably the 
source not only of the account of the Annunciation, but of the 
account of the visit to Elizabeth, which is vividly described, and 
in which that great thanksgiving, the Magnificat, points to Mary's 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 285 

direct authorship. Indeed, a larger passage of St. Luke may be as- 
cribed to her authorship, beginning at the fifth verse of the first chap- 
ter, where the classical Greek of the first four verses suddenly changes 
to Hebraistic Greek, and the narrative continues to be distinguished 
by this characteristic up to the end of the second chapter, where 
the passage communicated by the Blessed Virgin comes to a close. 

Thus far we have been occupying ourselves with John's life. 
Here we must pause and begin to think about a far more important 
event, the event of all events, the birth into this world of our Blessed 
Lord Jesus Christ. St. Matthew i. verses 18-25, tells us about 
this, and connects everything with the prophecies in the Old Testa- 
ment. St. Matthew quotes Isaiah to this effect : 'Behold, a virgin 
. . . . shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name 
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (St. Matthew 
i. verse 23) ; 'and she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call 
his name JESUS : for he shall save his people from their sins' 
(St. Matthew i. verse 21). 

The word Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means, 
Jehovah is Salvation. Christ is the Greek form of the Hebrew 
Messiah. The Anointed One is the official name of the Saviour. 
An angel had appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him all that 
was going to happen, and that he was to have no fear. This is 
obviously Joseph's own account. At this time, we read in Luke ii. 
verse i, that a new decree was made. The words of St. Luke are : 
'And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree 
from Caesar Augustus (the Roman Emperor), that all the world 
should be taxed' (i.e., enrolled). This means that a general regis- 
tration of names of all the inhabitants was to be taken, what we 
may call a census — the census of Quirinius, not till later civil gov- 
ernor of Syria, but perhaps then military head. The Jews were 
all most particular as to their names being put down in their own 
native city. The families of Joseph and Mary belonged to Bethle- 
hem as descendants of David. There they wished to be enrolled. 
It just occurs to me to mention the meaning of the word Bethle- 
hem. It is rather a nice meaning. The word Bethlehem means : 
'place of bread.' With love and reverence we read in the Bible that 
our Lord called Himself the 'Bread of Life.' 

The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem which Joseph and 
Mary took necessitated their turning in a southward direction. We 
can picture Mary riding on an ass, according to the custom of the 
country, comfortably seated on piled-up rugs; no doubt an earthen 
ware jug would be slung across the animal, also a leathern pouch 
or bag, with bread and dates and figs, provisions provided for the 



286 'ALL HAIL' 

journey. The two travellers would come to the rocky gorge of 
Esdraelon, they would reach the town of Engannim, all amongst 
fruitful orchards. They would in due course find themselves among 
the hills of Samaria, possibly a night's rest might be taken in the 
valley of Shechem, the modern Nablus, situated between the mounts 
Ebal and Gerizim, the mountain of cursing and the mountain of 
blessing as they are called in Scripture. 

We recall to mind that in this particular part of Palestine, the rati- 
fication of the Old Covenant of God with the Hebrews took place. 
It was in this region that Samuel first prophesied. Here were some 
places of intensest interest in Bible history, for instance, Shiloh 
and Bethel, the place where Abraham had first pitched his tents, 
where Jacob lodged on his way to Mesopotamia, and where he had 
his ladder-dream. And thus the two would journey on, and reach, 
one after another, many celebrated places associated with stirring 
memories of the past and of Old Testament days. Mizpah would 
come in sight, the watchtower of the land, built on a lofty eminence. 
The grave of Rachel would be another landmark. Altogether the 
journey would be about ninety miles. At last, weary and travel- 
stained this humble pair would reach Bethlehem, glad to find rest no 
matter where, in that overcrowded and noisy inn, which gave them so 
scant a welcome. Oh ! how I wish that my readers could see with 
their own eyes this wonderful city of Bethlehem, as I first set eyes 
upon it that never-to-be-forgotten day when I reached it. 

Leaving Jerusalem, and passing along the high road, a very sinister 
spot is pointed out to you on your left. A solitary tree, which has 
ever since borne the name of a most miserable man, marks the 
spot. This is where Judas is said to have hanged himself, after 
he had betrayed our Lord. We pass, in Spring, along intensely 
green fields on either side, the very fields where Ruth had gleaned ; 
the very pastures where King David, when still a shepherd-boy, had 
watched and tended his flocks. In front of us open out terraces 
built by means of stone walls, made out of chips and pieces of rock. 
Fig and olive trees abound. Here, as chief feature of the landscape, 
Bethlehem itself spreads out. Hardly does imagination carry us 
so far as to make it possible to believe that this is Bethlehem, and 
that such a privilege should be ours, that our very eyes can look 
upon the birthplace of our Blessed Lord. On the afternoon I am 
speaking about, a brilliant sun was shining brightly. Thick, white, 
fleecy, gold-lined clouds were overhead. The air was balmy. A 
wondrous feeling possessed the very soul. Never shall I forget en- 
tering Bethlehem. In the old wall, the well was pointed out to me 
which we remember in connection with King David. 'And David 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 287 

longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of 
the well of Beth-lehem, that is at the gate!' (i Chronicles xi. 
verse 17). 

On the roadside coming along, I had also passed another well, the 
same one, we are told to-day, which the three Magi had halted by, 
to refresh themselves and their camels, when they were pilgrimag- 
ing to Bethlehem at the time of the birth of our Lord. Strange, as 
well as interesting, is the fact that after all these years, the customs 
of Palestine have remained unchanged. The day I was travelling 
in this country, strings of camels were sallying forth with dark- 
stained Arabs, clothed with a white shirt and an upper garment, and 
a handkerchief headgear secured by means of a black silken cord, 
men and boys sitting jauntily on the backs of the anim.als, the former 
swaying to and fro in perfect rhythm with the camel's gait. There 
were other boys and men filling skins of animals with water, just 
as we read of their doing in the Old Testament days, and slinging 
them when full across their backs, either carrying them away home, 
or by means of a little bell which they rang attracting the notice 
of passers-by, who are always glad of water in that thirsty land. 

Here was Bethlehem with all its associations. Here it was that 
Mary gave birth to that Holy Child, her first-born Son, who was 
wrapped up in swaddling clothes, and was cradled in a manger. 
In olden days the Arabs often built houses near and into the rocks. 
We still come across this kind of house ; they are called Khans, 
and we would call them inns. Thus we can picture the whole 
scene, just as it all took place, at the very time of the birth of our 
Saviour. You pass through an archway and enter a court-yard, 
a large open space, in the middle of which stands, as its chief 
feature, a huge basin built over the well. The mere sight of the 
water refreshes the weary traveller and his still more worn-out ani- 
mal. 'Water, water,' is the cry of all in that hot and dusty country. 
Round this open space, against the walls, straw and food are lit- 
tered about. Animals are tied up, and packages lie about promis- 
cuously. On the first floor an overhanging gallery affords ac- 
commodation for the traveller himself. On that most memorable 
occasion, the khan, or inn, was full to overflowing. No guest- 
chamber was vacant for Mary and her unborn babe. These travel- 
lers, who bore with them God's gracious destiny for all mankind, 
had to take their chance among the humblest of the other wayfar- 
ers. 

No consideration or attention appears to have been given to this 
chosen woman, the Mother of our Lord. Thus we see that this 
wonderful babe was born into our world under more trying condi- 



288 'ALL HAIL' 

tions than other children. Our Saviour's birth at Bethlehem recalls 
to us a Messianic prophecy (Micah v. verse 2): 'But thou, Beth- 
lehem' Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be 
ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from 
everlasting.' Jesus was the most wonderful child that has ever been 
born on earth, and yet he was born like any other child. The 
destinies of mankind, and the higher life of the human race, were 
bound up in this little helpless babe. 

Outside of the khan in the fields, on this wonderful first Christ- 
mas night, awaiting dawn and sunrise, shepherds were taking their 
rest, each with his staff at his side, around a camp fire, lighted to 
scare away any prowling wild beast. From Jewish sources we 
gather that the sheep fed on the heights of Bethlehem were the 
Temple flocks which were kept there all the year round, and used 
for sacrifices. It is significant that He whose coming was to end 
all these sacrifices, by the sacrifice of Himself, should be born 
so near to the pasturage of the sacrificial Temple sheep. 

No doubt, in the distance, the shepherds would see the lights of 
Bethlehem. Overhead the windows of heaven opened, so as to 
reveal the splendour of the starry skies, seen best in the clear at- 
mosphere of that land of marvellous history. Such, if we may recall 
it, was probably the scene on this auspicious occasion. 

Suddenly an angel of the Lord stood by them and announced: 
'Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is 
Christ the Lord.' Then the heavenly host said 'Glory to God' 
under the starlight ; strains of melody sounded from the skies, 
until all was trobbing with love and light and life. Full of curios- 
ity as to what could be possibly happening, possessed with eager- 
ness to see for themselves this wondrous child, guided by the Heav- 
enly Vision, we see our shepherds coming to worship Jesus in His 
manger-cradle, which was really His manger-throne. Simple shep- 
herds, we see, are thus the first to worship Him who called Himself 
the Good Shepherd, who said that one day there would be one 
flock, one Shepherd. Blessed shepherds to be thus privileged. 

It may be not uninteresting to recall here, that sheep are the first 
domesticated animals we hear of in Bible history. We remember 
reading about them in connection with Abel; then with Abraham' 
and Lot; with Jacob, Rebecca, and Rachel. In a pastoral commun- 
ity they were counted as the chief wealth of those who possessed 
them. Job had 7000 before his misfortunes and 14,000 after. Men 
and women tended them carefully. The office of looking after them 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 289 

was one of great responsibility. A shepherd was an important 
person, as having such valuable property in his charge. 

In Syria to-day we see flocks of sheep and goats, the shepherd 
walking at the head of them, and leading them — just as in our 
Lord's time, and as He describes it ; each one of them; he knows by 
name, so that he can call them separately. He always has a dog, 
but there is no need for the dog to be so active as is the case with 
us; there the dog is merely for extra protection. When in the 
Holy Land, I used to watch the Bedouin women, children of the 
desert, pouring the milk of their animals into a skin, then tying it 
up at either end to a pole fastened down to the ground, and then 
a woman pulling a rope attached to the skin, swinging the skin up 
and down, thus churning butter. 

Because these animals which I have been sjpeaking about were of 
such importance to the people of old, we see how natural it was for 
them to be spoken of so constantly in the Bible. Poor little helpless 
animals, especially the young, stray and get lost and come to grief, 
just as we, in our own spiritual lives, are only too apt to do. It is 
with gratitude that we look to Our Shepherd, who never fails to 
come to our rescue when He hears us calling to Him for succoui* 
and help. No animal in the Scriptures compares with the sheep as 
a religious symbol. The Lord's people are His sheep, and He is 
their Shepherd. Nay, the symbol of the sheep is taken to describe 
the relation of Christ to His people: He is the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin of the world by the sacrifice of Himself. 
Each time we come across a shepherd in the Holy Land, the thought 
comes to one's mind that it was to such as these God first sent 
his Best of Tidings. They look very picturesque in their loos^^ 
draperies, called over there cafton and abha. The staff they cafry 
has a thick heavy notch at the top, and has a quantity of nails driven 
into it, so that it makes a powerful weapon of offence or defence. 
Oftentimes I have heard them blowing a weird little melody, just on 
two or three plaintive notes, produced from a simple instrument 
made by them' out of a cane. 

It is quite easy to understand why the shepherds were sore afraid. 
We in England are breathless with excitement, even in these latter 
days, when we realise the scene of that night, as we stand with 
rapt gaze in contemplation of hallowed memories. The glory of 
the Lord shone about those shepherds. Bathed in the all-pervad- 
ing sunshine and with the fairy-like colouring of that wondrous 
country, as I beheld it, all looks to-day indescribably beautiful. 
What must it have been on that supreme occasion in the glorious 



290 * ALL HAIL ' 

Eastern moonlight, when Christ was born, and the glory of the 
Lord shone around? The shepherds were visited by angel-mes- 
sengers, who said: 'Fear not.' God is always consoling us; He is 
constantly telling us not to be afraid. How good God is, and how 
thankful we ought ever to be. 

St. Luke ii. verses lo, ii: 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you 
good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto 
you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ 
the Lord.' They were told that they were to receive a proof. The 
angel's words to the shepherds are (verse 12) : 'And this shall be 
a sign unto you (R.V. 'is the sign') ; ye shall find the babe wrapped 
in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.' Our Evangelist goes on 
to say: 'And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of 
heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the high- 
est, and on earth peace, good will toward men.' 

Glory to God! Good-will to men. Here we have the revelation 
of what is best to act on. To praise and to glorify God, and to 
have goodwill, which means to feel and to act kindly towards our 
fellow-creatures. This is the lesson which Christ came to teach 
us, and which He desires us to learn. The shepherds had said, 
*. . . . Let us now go even unto Bethlehem', and see this thing 
which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us' 
(verse 15). So they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, 
and the Babe lying in a manger, and adored Him. Let our loving 
thoughts turn often to this incomparable scene. They might well 
marvel at everything, as even now we do as to how all came to 
pass. We have seen them kneeling before the Infant King. We 
also are bidden to do likewise. 'They made known abroad the 
saying which was told them concerning this child' (verse 17). We 
are again told to do the same, and to make the Good News known 
to all people. We read that Mary 'kept all these things, and pon- 
dered them in her heart' (St. Luke ii. verse 19). Let us too ponder. 
But let us never be tempted to doubt. Just here it is appropriate 
for us to turn to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (chapter ix. 
verse 6) and read: 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given : and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The 
everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.' 

Truly these are wonderful words, fraught with deepest meaning. 
How can chance or doubt hold a place in the Bible? Surely not, 
in face of such prophecies and of such fulfilments on God's part. 
Such forethought, such wisdom, such continuity of purpose. In- 
deed, we cannot help seeing His guiding hand through all the ages. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 291 

We have here a lovely picture to look at. We see the two holy 
children, Our Lord Jesus and John the Baptist. They are embrac- 
ing and kissing one another — a beautiful foreshadowing of their 
after-life. 



CHAPTER XX. 

The Gospels (Jesus at Bethlehem — At Jerusalem — At 
Nazareth). 

When Jesus was eight days old, Mary and Joseph took Him to 
the Temple. The Blessed Virgin felt gratitude welling up in her 
heart. She wished to give expression to this by a thanksgiving 
offering. According to Eastern custom those who were rich gave 
a lamb for a burnt offering; those that were poor brought two 
pigeons. Mary was, we see, among the poor folk. The sin offer- 
ing was made for the purification of the mother. 

Jesus underwent the Jewish rite of circumcision. We remember 
that this custom dated back to the days of Abraham. We remem- 
ber reading about the patriarch circumcising his son Isaac by the 
rite which taught the duty of having the body as well as the mind 
consecrated unto the Lord. 

St. Luke ii. verse 25 : 'And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem 
whose name was Simeon ; and the same man was just and devout, 
waiting for the consolation of Israel (i.e., the Messianic age) and 
the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by 
the Holy Ghost that he should not see death, before he had seen 
the Lord's Christ' (i.e., the Messiah of God). 

How beautiful was this promise of the realisation of the Messianic 
hope. What a favoured man he was to be allowed to hold the 
precious Babe in his arms. Moved by the Holy Spirit he came into 
the Temple when the Blessed Virgin entered, 'then took he him in 
his arms.' Deeply moved was the old man. He blessed God for 
this great privilege. Looking first in tenderest love at this marvel- 
lous Child, then raising up his eyes in gratitude to God in Heaven, 
this venerable old man spoke those inspired words : 'Lord, now 
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word : 
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation (i.e., the Messiah), which 
thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to 
lighten the Gentiles (R.V., 'a light for revelation to the Gentiles') 
and the glory of thy people Israel' (verses 29-32). The happy 
mother afterwards heard from Simeon those prophetic words how 
her own heart would be pierced by the sword of sorrow, on ac- 
count of the sufferings of her Divine Child, a prophecy fulfilled at 
the Crucifixion. 

292 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 293 

Before proceeding let us dwell one moment on a meaning of 
the word Gentiles. The beautiful passage we have just quoted 
speaks of 'a light to lighten the Gentiles.' Who are these people 
that are justified in rejoicing in the promise of such a valuable gift 
at God's hands as light to lighten them? The word 'Gentiles' rep- 
resents Goim (Heb,, nations), common in the O.T. to designate non- 
Jewish people; that is to say, those who were not circumcised, nor 
privileged to participate in the much-prized Temple worship. A 
Gentile meant, in the mouth of a Jew, a heathen or pagan. At the 
time that the Gospels were written the Jew was still highly consid- 
ered, but the Gentile also was received into the Christian Church. 
Through God's wonderful ordering, the Gentiles at this present 
time compose the great bulk of God's own people, namely, those 
who are members of the universal Church of Christ. It is the nation 
of the Jews that has brought down upon itself the reproach of the 
whole world by rejecting its own Messiah, our Christ, and in so 
doing has failed to fulfil God's purpose, by which through it all the 
nations of the world were to be blessed. In the days of Simeon 
it was the Gentile who was the alien, and yet Gentiles were the very 
ones specially chosen to have this Divine light of Christ shed on 
their path. Salvation was promised to them. We see for ourselves 
how true this promise was, and how all has come about just in this 
very way. 

The Holy Virgin and Joseph marvelled at Simeon's words. And 
there was in the Temple along with the others a very old woman, 
who had lived seven years with her husband till his death, and 
eighty-four years as his widow, and would, therefore, if she was not 
more than twelve years when married, be of the great age of a 
hundred and three. This was 'one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter 
of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser' (St. Luke ii. verse 36). She 
corroborated the testimony of Simeon, and showed that she also 
knew that this Holy Child was the Messiah of Israel. She 'de- 
parted not from the Temple, but served God with fastings and prayers 
night and day' (verse 37). She came into the Temple that very 
instant when the infant Jesus was in Simeon's arms, and also gave 
thanks to the Lord, and spake of Him to all them that looked for 
redemption in Jerusalem. 

We have seen how shepherds sought the Christ-child in order to 
adore Him. In our next two pictures, which are respectively by 
Ghirlandaio and Fabriano, dealing with the adoration of the Magi, 
we notice in the background a procession wending its way along, 
all the people bent on finding the marvellous Babe. We come now 
to the visit of the Magi, which the A.V. translates 'wise men' in 



294 ^ 'ALL HAIL' 

St. Matthew's account. They came from the East— from Media, 
Persia, or Babylonia, a priestly caste of magical tendencies, much 
engaged in study of the stars and divination. Daniel in his lifetime 
\yas chief of the Magi of Babylon, a renowned interpreter of 
dreams, and since the study of the stars was specially carried on 
in Babylon these Magi were probably Babylonians. The Jewish con- 
nection was strong in Babylonia, and therefore the widespread 
Jewish excitement at this time about the near coming of the Mes- 
siah would be well known. On this particular occasion some new 
star appears to have swum into their field of vision, and to have 
become connected in their minds with the expectation of the Mes- 
siah, to worship whom they had set forth. The Magi were bent on 
finding the wonderful Child. They came from very far — whether 
from' Persia, Babylonia, or Media is not certain. They at first 
came to the conclusion that this Holy Child could only have been 
born at the capital itself, namely, Jerusalem. Thither they went — 
no doubt on camels, the ships of the desert, richly caparisoned, 
with gay and bright saddles and harness — accompanied by a retinue 
of servants laden with precious gifts, as the Queen of Sheba was 
when she visited King Solomon, wherewith to do homage to this 
new-born King. 

Having arrived at Jerusalem, they heard the old prophecies of 
Bethlehem as the place of the wonderful birth. The object of their 
coming aroused the bitter jealousy of the evil-minded Herod, known 
as Herod the Great, who reigned from 2>7 b-C* to 4 b.c. As Jesus 
was born two years before Herod's death, the date of His birth 
could not be later than 6 B.C., and this date is generally accepted. 
Herod was by birth an Idumaean, by religious profession a Jew. 
A tributary king under the Roman Empire, in touch with Greek as 
well as Roman civilisation, he was practically cosmopolitan. His 
one aim and object was to secure his very unstable position. Na- 
tional feeling was strongly against him. Carried away by the fash- 
ion then prevalent amongst the Romans for restoring old cities and 
old temples, Herod commenced rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem 
B.C. 20-19. A desire to promote the religious welfare of the people, 
says Josephus, was the reason alleged by Herod. The real reason 
was pride — the desire to raise a magnificent memorial of himself. 

At the time of which we are speaking Herod was king of Judaea, 
but he was a tributary under the Roman Emperor. Herod was 
a most cruel tyrant : he killed his wife and his two sons, and. he was 
extremely suspicious of plots against himself; so he sat lonely on 
iis throne and died a dreadful death. His memory accordingly has 
been handed down to posterity as infamous. In his perplexity as 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 295 

to the inquiries of the Magi about the Infant-King, he began ask- 
ing the chief priests and the scribes where Christ should be born. 
Herod was told by the chief priests and scribes, Tn Bethlehem of 
Judsea,' for everything had come about as had been foretold by 
the prophets. Have we not just read for ourselves in the prophets 
Micah and Isaiah that this was so indeed? Herod was told: 'And 
thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the 
princes of Juda' ( St. Matthew ii. verse 6) . Well, we understand what 
this means. Bethlehem was truly a privileged place to be selected 
as the birthplace of our Lord. Where is the city, indeed, which 
would not willingly have changed places with Bethlehem, to be re- 
membered for all ages to come as the home of the lowly but all- 
holy Jesus? Herod was told: 'Out of thee (Bethlehem) shall come 
a governor, that shall rule my people Israel' (verse 6). (R.V. 
'shall be shepherd of.') 

The Magi were instructed to search diligently for the young Child 
until they found Him, and then to return to Herod, in order that 
he, too, might worship Him. The Magi arrived at Bethlehem, and 
there they saw the star standing, or seeming to stand, over the place 
where the Babe was lying. When they saw the star they rejoiced 
with exceeding great joy, and when they were come unto the house 
they fell down on their knees and worshipped the Child. This was 
the first Epiphany: the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. 
Better instructed than the Magi, we shall try to realise the mystery 
of Christ's twofold personality, and we shall believe in the reality 
of this fact, that He was at once Perfect Man and Perfect God. 

To the Holy Child the Wise Men presented their gifts of gold 
and frankincense and myrrh. All these were, it is said, symbolical: 
gold was the proper offering to a King, symbolising Christ's roy- 
alty; frankincense, or incense, which is a dry, resinous, sweet-smell- 
ing gum, symbolised (Christ's divinity; myrrh is the gum of a tree 
which grows in Palestine on the slopes and hillsides. This gum has 
a bitter taste : on this account we take it that this offering of myrrh 
was symbolical of the bitterness and suffering, and especially of the 
Passion, which Christ had to endure while on earth. 

That the Magi should not have been staggered when they found 
the Infant-King in such humble surroundings is much to their credit, 
and shows the strength of their faith, and the power of their insight 
which penetrated beneath externals, and found in Jesus, the King, to 
do homage to whom they had travelled so far by the guiding of 
a star. If they came from the Euphrates, as seems probable, this 
was the land from which Balaam had come to prophesy, when con- 
trary to his own will he had predicted the blessings that were to 



296 'ALL HAIL' 

come through Israel ; and this was the land in which, at a much later 
date, Daniel was made the chief of the Magi or Wise Men, owing to 
his skill in interpreting dreams, and where he had seen the vision of 
the Son of Man, and recorded his great Messianic prophecy. 

To the Magi, who were interpreters of dreams, was given the 
warning, very appropriately in a dream, not to return to Jerusalem. 
As by a flash of lightning on a dark night, we see these real but 
mysterious personages for a moment, and then they disappear for 
ever. For a moment let us pause in our reading. Let us devote 
ourselves now to the study of the meaning of one of our pictures 
on the subject before us. Is not the amiable old man with his white 
hair, who is kissing the little foot of our Infant Saviour, an at- 
tractive figure? This very foot it was which, after the Child had 
grown into Man, was kissed by a sinful woman and wetted with 
loving tears, for sin forgiven and repentant love accepted ; and this 
very foot was afterwards nailed to the Cross. Then we see the 
other two Magi, reverently and with much dignity, advancing; one 
of them is a dusky-skinned sage, young in years, and this reminds 
us that the black races are destined to accept one day the Saviour of 
the world. In the foreground of the picture we see two darling 
innocent children, clad in purest white robes, these latter stained 
witli drops of blood, a symbol of violent death inflicted by the 
swords of Herod's cruel soldiers. Of such innocent-hearted, inno- 
cent-lived little children is the Kingdom of Heaven: as the Child 
of Bethlehem afterwards taught in His manhood when He said, 
'Suffer the little children to come unto me' (St. Mark x. verse 14). 

Again, we see John the Baptist painted on this picture as a grown- 
up man. The Italian artist got somewhat mixed in this way: 
he forgot w^hile painting that Christ and John were almost the same 
age. Ghirlandaio thought of John as the grown-up man in all his 
strength and vigour. No doubt the Scripture words were upper- 
most in his mind : 'Among those that are born of women there is 
not a greater prophet than John the Baptist' (St. Luke vii. verse 
28). We must all admire this gloriously painted picture, and those 
who have seen it are never likely to forget it. The seascape in the 
background lights up the whole canvas. The ships we see sailing 
on the blue waters we imagine to be those in which apostles like 
St. Paul went to foreign lands all over the Mediterranean, anxious 
and fervent in heart to do their Master's behest, namely, to spread 
His good news among all people. This picture was painted by order 
for the chapel of an institution established for dear little innocent 
children to live in, and to be brought to Christ ; such children as are 
called 'foundlings,' and are taken care of by kind people. We ever 



■ SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 297 

pray that all dwellers in the Innocenti Hospital in Florence may be 
specially blessed, that a rich harvest for good may be gathered in, 
and souls won for Christ and the Heavenly Home above. 

Herod soon realised that he had been mocked and that his orders 
had been disregarded. He was furious, and he resolved that, al- 
though not able to find this Royal Child, he would make sure of 
preventing such a rival from sitting on his throne. He ordered all 
male children of two years old and under to be slain. The mothers 
of Bethlehem were made to moan and to grieve over the loss of 
their beloved little ones. Jeremiah (xxx. 15) has words applied 
by St. Matthew to the slaughter of the Innocents: Tn Rama was 
there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and ^reat mourning, 
Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted be- 
cause they are not' And, indeed, how was it possible for these 
poor mothers ever to be comforted or consoled for the loss of their 
slaughtered children? Our Heavenly Father was all the while 
watching over the safety of His Divine Son. Jesus was far away 
from envy, hatred, and malice. Joseph had another dream, and 
once more was directed by God what to do. St. Matthew ii. 13 : 
'. . . . Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee 
into Egypt.' - Joseph arose, and started by night, and we read of 
his taking the young Child and his mother to their destination. 
Here they remained until Herod had died. On the flight into Egypt 
St. Matthew quotes Hosea xi. i : 'Out of Egypt have I called my 
Son,' though these words referred to the calling of the Israelites 
out of Egypt. This is taken from the Hebrew directly. 

Guided in a dream by God's angel, Joseph returned to the land of 
Israel with the young Child and the Blessed Virgin. Herod was 
dead, but Archelaus reigned in his father's stead, and Joseph was 
still fearful of returning to Judsea, and decided to go into Galilee, 
to a city called Nazareth. Once more let us recall St. Matthew's 
characteristic Jewish view: 'He shall be called a Nazarene' (St. 
Matthew ii. 23). 

The Flight into Egypt has been treated by many of the Italian 
artists. Before us we have a very interesting picture by Benozzo 
Gozzoli : we see Mary seated on her ass, with her precious Babe 
clasped closely in her arms, and Joseph leading them along on their 
journey, passing the mountain of Olivet on their right, and leaving 
Jerusalem behind with all its walls and towers, as they were making 
their way towards Egj'pt. 

In Nazareth, where our Holy Family now took up their abode, 
we have another famous town of Palestine, ever to be remembered 
in connection with our Saviour's life. The situation of Nazareth 



298 ' ALL HAIL ' 

is beautiful in the extreme. Situated on the gentle slopes of the 
lower hills of Galilee, its houses are of white limestone, and stand 
in the midst of profuse greenery, fruit trees, olive groves, and vine- 
yards. Everything looks exquisitely clean, and all is kept in good 
order by the inhabitants of to-day, who are mostly Christians. At 
Nazareth there is a well. From time immemorial this has been the 
one and only water supply of Nazareth. Therefore we are justified 
in believing that to this well came the Virgin Mary, accompanied 
by her Son. At the present day customs and dress prevail in Naz- 
areth much as in the days of old, for the unchanging East is all 
around us. At sunset in the evening women and girls and boys 
sally forth, every one attired in the quaint, gracefully flowing na- 
tional costume, which is of varied and bright hues, intense and yet 
harmonious, thanks to the keen light and the power of the sun, 
before whose rays all is brought into harmony. The water for 
their home needs, which the villagers come in quest of, they carry 
away in odd-looking square tin waterpots, or in beautifully moulded 
earthenware vases, each one of which is poised with strictest se- 
curity and perfect balance on shoulder or on head. In consequence 
of this the carriage of the inhabitants is erect and stately. 

Seen from my tent, pitched on the opposite low range of hills, 
Nazareth rising right in front afforded me every opportunity of feast- 
ing my eyes on infinite beauty of scenery, and on flowering gardens 
which shed forth most delightful perfumes. A fine building which 
stands out boldly on an eminence commands attention. This is the 
Girls' College, where little Arab children are brought up, and 
are taught Christ's loving words of command: 'Suffer the little 
children to come unto me.' 

Never shall I forget the ride I took after visiting this Girls' 
Home, and having been shown round by a little girl, called Nassra. 
Translated into English, this name is Victoria. All the little chil- 
dren are happy, and the Englishwomen who keep the school pro- 
vided a great pleasure for me. All these Arab girls united and 
sang songs and hymns in English, which the children pronounced 
very well indeed, and also in Arabic, which sounded melodious 
and soft. Riding away from here, up towards the hill beyond and 
above this building, I arrived at the summit of the range of hills. 
One thought was ever uppermost — the thought that our Blessed 
Saviour must often have visited this same place. I felt this indeed 
to be for myself, as for ever Christian, holy ground. 

Hither He must have walked to be alone, and to approach and 
commune with His Father in Heaven. His eyes must have beheld 
all the beauty of the scene spread before Him. On that memorable 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE' 299 

evening on which I was first privileged to feel the associations of 
those sublime surroundings, I looked out into the country on all 
sides: there was not a single view which was not wonderfully in- 
spiring. There, at one's feet, the plain of Esdraelon lay spread 
out, like a thick-piled Eastern carpet. On one side was Mount 
Carmel, on the other Mount Tabor. Then Megiddo, Samaria, Gil- 
boa; the village of Endor, notorious for the witch who was con- 
sulted by Saul; Jezreel in the middle of cornfields; with Mount 
Hermon, snow-crested, towering over all. Quite close by is the site 
of the tiny village of Sesostris, considered to be the spot where 
stood the native village of the Virgin Mary, where she dwelt as a 
child, according to a tradition, with her parents. As an illustration 
of the saintliness possible in childhood we give a picture of St 
Ursula. 

Away in another direction, is the Haifa Harbour, with the town 
of Acre, and the blue and calm Mediterranean beyond. Then 
again, are to be seen the breezy uplands of Naphtali and Zebulon. 
The bluest of blue skies is above, the dearest of floewrs under one's 
feet. Never shall I forget it all. Oh! to be there once more, and 
for numberless people to have an apportunity to be there, in order 
that each might drink in and make his own the atmosphere and 
associations of one of the holiest places on earth. Simply to realise 
this, that our Lord had once rested here, that His gaze had dwelt 
uopn every detail of this country, that here was where He had 
often knelt in prayer, is an inspiring and elevating experience. 

The sun went down, a huge golden-red ball, and dipped into the 
sea. Its dying glory suffused the heavens for a while, and the sky 
took tints and hues which baffle description. Quietly nature gave 
itself up to repose, and the flowers closed their tired eyelids. One 
silvery star appeared and looked around as if to ascertain that it 
had made no mistake as to its appointment. It seemed to express 
surprise, but not for long was it left alone or in doubt. Soon, one 
by one, peeped out its companions, and they all gave a smile of 
welcome to one another. Through the clear dry Eastern atmos- 
phere the stars seemed double the size they seem at home, as their 
silvery fires flashed and flared through the darkening vault of 
heaven. Thus ever changing, but ever abiding in beauty, God's 
great infinity of the Universe opened vista after vista of exquisite 
and varied loveliness. It required a wrench on my part to tear 
myself away from this enthralling scene; but my pony had carried 
me up well, and he knew evening had come on apace, and that 
well-earned rest was now his due. He was now pawing the ground, 
and I took it to mean that he was asking me for his much-needed 



300 'ALL HAIL' 

supper. So we left the place of hallowed memories, of grandeur 
and greatness, resting in God's hands. We took away a priceless 
possession, a memory which we shall ever keep. It is from such 
vivid experiences on the spot that we gain a sense of the reality of 
what we read in the Bible. 

St. Luke, who passes over the Visit of the Magi and the Flight 
into Egypt, which bulks so large in St. Matthew's mind, proceeds 
at once from what we have read about Anna the prophetess to the 
return to Nazareth (ii. 39-40) : 'And when they had performed all 
things according to the law of the Lord they returned into Galilee, 
to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew, and waxed strong 
in spirit, filed with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon him.' 

Nazareth was particularly well suited for the bringing up of a 
child, and we can see how much our Lord valued in later years 
His early training here. A minute or two ago we alluded to its 
being a hill-town. In such it is commonly the case that the race 
is strong and hardy, as well as hard-working. Farmers and village 
workmen live strenuous lives. The youthful Jesus W9uld draw in 
the sound principle of the sanctity and nobleness or labour from 
the everyday life he saw around Him, and lived Himself in Joesph 
the carpenter's shop. His sympathies would go out towards the 
masses whose destiny is to earn their daily bread. The spirit of 
self-reliance, of duty, of unselfishness, would impress H'is fresh and 
developing mind. Among frank, open, true and generously-minded 
people, Jesus would thus grow up and be able to enter into sym- 
pathy with them, sympathy afterwards to expand into His match- 
less sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men. 

The people of Galilee in our Saviour's time spoke two languages : 
Aramaic, or Syrian, which had taken the place of Hebrew, and 
Greek, which had come to be the language of the Eastern Empire 
since the days of Alexander the Great. Our Saviour evidently spoke 
and read Greek with facility, and the Greek Bible was the one with 
which He was most familiar, and which He habitually quoted for 
most parts of the Old Testament. To-day, French and Turkish 
or Arabic are freely used in the Holy Land. Jesus would be taught 
the Jewish faith and the Jewish Scriptures, and would be versed 
in all customs and laws of the synagogue at Nazareth. We know 
that every year there was held in Jerusalem the great feast of the 
Passover. His parents regularly attended this festival, one which 
the Jews had never, since the earliest days, allowed to fall into per- 
manent disuse. 

When Jesus was twelve years old, He was taken by His parents 
to join in this great religious duty. It is not difficult to picture 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 301 

to ourselves all the experiences that would crowd in upon the fresh 
and undefiled mind of this carefully nurtured and holy boy. The 
same caravan road still exists between Nazareth and Jerusalem. 
When visiting that part of the world, one's thoughts keep reverting 
to Bible days. How Christ must have enjoyed the same life-giving 
sunshine. How the bright-eyed flowers of the landscape in all their 
vari-coloured magnificence must have seemed to welcome Him as 
He went past. 

This feast of the Passover always took place in the Spring. 
Surely this is the most glad and glorious time in any land, but with- 
out doubt pre-eminently so in the Holy Land. Winter rains and 
storms are all over, as if they had never been. Roads have been 
repaired; all nature has awakened, and is in a mood of intensest 
joy. Spring, glorious Spring, with fairy wand bids nature put on 
her crown and festal robe. Caravans of animals and people sally 
forth and swell the living stream of thousands making for the Holy 
City. Mules and camels are laden. All Palestine is on the move. 
No danger of prowling beast, no fear of attack from hostile tribe, 
daunts them. Roads and hills and valleys resound with songs and 
animation. All is life, activity, expectation. The path down from 
Nazareth is rocky and rough. Presently it leads to the very plain 
of Esdraelon which we have been speaking about, where Barak 
and Sisera fought, and on to the valley of Shechem, which is beau- 
tiful beyond words, wild and romantic. Whispering streams and 
melodious song of happy birds cheer the wanderer on his way. The 
Holy Family would pass on in turn to Shiloh, which at the present 
day is marked by a tottering ruin and a solitary tree, and then on to 
Bethel and the many places we have already spoken about. Each 
incident of the journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem would be of 
intense interest to a boy : the lighting of the fire at night to cook an 
evening meal; the fetching of the water from well or stream; the 
men ungirthing and unloading the animals and attending to their 
wants. Above all, the magic charm of the open country itself. 
All is so marvellously attractive. Perhaps five or six days would 
be spent on this journey. We see what trouble all these pilgrims 
took, and what hardships the people of those days were willing to 
endure, in order to gratify their intense pious longing, and fulfil 
their obligations by worshipping in the Holy Temple. Jerusalem, 
the rock-enthroned city, would at last be reached. 

The central interest there is focussed on this very rock, of which 
we have already spoken in our Old Testament readings. It is the 
same which Araunah, the Jebusite, sold to King David, and the 
same on which Abraham had been willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. 



302 ' ALL HAIL ' 

Jerusalem (written Uhusalim) appears on the tablet letters, discov- 
ered at Tel-el-Amarna, between two kings, one of whom was an 
early ruler of Jerusalem, and the other was Amenephis the Fourth, 
one of the Pharaohs of Egypt as early as 1450 b.c., before the He- 
brew conquest of Canaan. Earlier still were Abraham's relations 
with Melchisedec, king of Salem. The first half of the word, 
namely, Uru, means a city: Salim or Salem means peace, that is 
the city of peace. By the irony of fate it proved the exact opopsite, 
because perhaps in no other city of the world has there been so much 
bloodshed and so much destruction of the buildings of a place, as in 
this very city called Jerusalem — the 'city of peace.' 

As regards Bible days, as we have seen, the city of Jerusalem was 
first mentioned in connection with that mysterious Priest-King Mel- 
chisedec, king of Salem, as it was then called. It may have been 
called Jebus at a later date, when the Jebusites were its inhabi- 
tants. To this day we have traces of their handwriting as to the 
foundations of the city. The holy rock is now enclosed and pro- 
tected by the Mosque of Omar, which was built by a Mohammedan 
potentate. When the tribes entered Canaan, Jerusalem' is first men- 
tioned by that name as the city of King Adoni-zedec in the book 
of Joshua X. verse i. King David removed his court from Hebron 
to Jerusalem. Here too was placed the Holy Ark, and afterwards 
was built the Holy Temple, from which Jerusalem obtained its 
name of the Holy City. We have read about the many wars which 
laid it low, and also how idolatrous Jews worshipped the host of 
heaven and groves and other idols in the Temple, even in the 
days of King Manasseh. Then how Jerusalem was restored and 
the true worship re-established in solitary majesty in the Temple 
by different good kings and prophets. We read then of internal 
conflicts, and of the falling out of the Tribes amongst themselves; 
we read of the Assyrians attacking and of the Chaldeans besieging 
and taking the Holy City, and leading its inhabitants into captivity. 
Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who 
. . , . had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, 
or him that stooped for age' (2 Chronicles xxxvi. verse 17). The 
Jews have never left off lamenting the lost independence of their 
beloved city. After a glorious struggle against the Syrian rule, 
Palestine passed into the possession of the world-empire of Rome, 
and the Jews were subject to Rome at the time of our Lord's 
ministry on earth. Jerusalem, from its close connection with our 
Lord, holds a place of its own as the most sacred city of the 
world. 

And now, after this short digression and attempted description 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 303 

of Jerusalem, let us get back to the Bible, and read of Our Blessed 
Lord when he was a boy of twelve, and think of the city and the 
festal garb it wore on the occasion of that memorable feast of the 
Passover. People would come, as we said awhile ago, from far and 
near, and Jerusalem would be full to overflowing. Outside the city 
walls tents would be put up for the accommodation of friends and 
travellers. Green boughs would be cut off and laid across the 
canvas to protect the inmates against the heat. People would 
festively adorn all available open spaces with palms and green 
branches, until the whole place would be decked out. Eastern street 
life is at best noisy, so would it be more than ever on this special 
occasion. At such a time even to-day vendors shout their wares ; 
drivers urge on fatigued animals : in the narrow streets people 
jostle one another, and it is impossible to describe all the stirring 
scenes that meet the eye on the arrival, on such a day, in an Eastern 
town, of vast multitudes of people. Into such surroundings would 
the Boy Jesus be launched on this His first journey from home. 
What a multitude of impressions would crowd in on his receptive 
mind. The approach to the Temple would be full of interest on 
account of the worship He would there see conducted for the first 
time. The young worshipper would be eager and alert not to miss 
anything of what might be heard and seen. 

After worship in the Temple we know that Jesus took the first 
important step in his life as it is recorded in the Bible. The most 
learned of the Jews at that time were called Rabbis, and used to 
teach their pupils in the Temple courts and porticos. The Rabbis 
sat on carpets spread on the pavement, and their pupils sat around 
them. They taught by putting questions to their pupils, and they 
encouraged their pupils to put questions to them. Jesus during this 
visit to Jerusalem' joined of his own choice one of these Rabbi's 
classes, and such was the result of the questions which He asked, 
and the depth of the answers which He gave, that a number of Rob- 
bis seem to have collected to hear this marvellous boy. 

Our Italian picture represents Him as occupying a central posi- 
tion, or walking about among the Rabbis, grown old in years as 
well as in experience, but St. Luke tells us that Jesus was found in 
the Temple 'sitting' in the midst of the doctors (that is, the rabbis), 
hearing them and asking them questions. 

At the close of the feast there would be a great exodus. All 
once more would be turmoil and uproar and preparation for the 
departure. 

St. Luke ii. verses 43-49: 'And when they had fulfilled the days, 
as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and 



304 'ALL HAIL' 

Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to 
have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought 
him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found 
him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And 
it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, 
sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking 
them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his 
understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were 
amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus 
dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. 
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not 
that I must be about my Father's business?' (better R.V. : 'in my 
Father's house?'), 

St. Luke goes on to say (verses 50-52) : 'And they understood not 
the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with 
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his 
mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in 
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.' This brief 
episode, and the comments on it in the second chapter of St. 
Luke, open to the sympathetic eye an illuminating vision of that 
perfect boyhood. All the information was evidently from our 
Lord's mother, for who but she could record such facts as this, 
known to herself alone? 'But his mother kept all these sayings 
in her heart' (Luke ii. verse 51). The beginning of the same verse 
contains information from the same source, and shows us that 
our Lord's astonishing revelation of His mental powers before the 
admiring Rabbis in the Temple had not been allowed by Him to 
lessen in any degree the paramount claims of parental authority. 
This boy from an obscure Galilean village was evidently not in the 
least carried away by the gratifying acknowledgment of the bril- 
liancy of His genius by the chief men of His nation at the sacred 
centre of the national and religious life. From this episode we 
learn the practical lesson that obedience to parents and those in 
authority is a part of the attainments of the perfect boyhood, and 
that Christ feels for and understands the needs of a boy. 

From our Lord's twelfth year up to His thirtieth there is almost 
a blank in the records of His life. There are a few valuable allu- 
sions, which enable us to form an idea of how those years were 
passed, which we will consider later on. The birth of Jesus was, as 
we have seen, closely associated with John the Baptist's birth, and 
we now come to a still closer association in afterlife. The event 
which brought them so closely together was the baptism of Jesus, 
a rite which was administered by John the Baptist. Baptism was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 305 

not a new thing when first John preached. The teaching of the 
Law was that those who had incurred a Levitical defilement were 
to baptize or plunge themselves in water before they offered sac- 
rifices. Moreover, when Gentiles become proselytes, they were ad- 
mitted to Israel's privileges by the rites of circumcision, baptism, 
and sacrifice, the baptism being the acknowledgment and symbolical 
removal of defilement. In other words, the admission into the 
privileges of the Old Covenant was prepared for by bodily washing 
or baptism; and just in the same way the admission into the King- 
dom of God, the New Covenant, was to be introduced by a general 
baptism of those who were to be the true Israel. John's message 
was simply this: the Kingdom' of God is at hand. John's baptism 
was the preparation for entrance into it. Israel, waiting for the 
Messiah and the kingdom of God, prepared themselves as their 
fathers had done at Mount Sinai. Everybody knew what the King- 
dom of God meant, or at least attached a definite meaning to it; 
for this was, of course^ the kingdom which the Messiah was, ac- 
cording to popular expectation, to establish on earth, of which the 
expectation was intense and widespread at that time. The approach 
of the Kingdom had been the message of the Old Testament; the 
coming of the Kingdom was to be the revelation of the New, for 
which coming this rite of Baptism was the preparation. 

It was by the symbolical use of the old Jewish rite of Baptism that 
John the Baptist emphasised his teaching. He appeared upon the 
scene as the successor, after a long interval, of the prophets of old. 
From the very beginning of his preaching he commanded the at- 
tention of those to whom he addressed the announcement of the 
Kingdom, which they all looked for as near at hand. He called the 
people to repentance, for no gift could be granted from above so 
long as people were not sorry for their sins. John had an immense 
attraction for people of all classes. He was, in a remarkable way, 
a close copy of Elijah. He was a Nazarite from his mother's 
womb ; one who had never tasted wine, a total abstainer from his 
birth: an ascetic of the severest kind, wearing the rough camel's 
hair of which the Arabs weave their tents, a fabric far more trying 
to the skin than sackcloth. This rough mantle, just like Elijah's 
mantle, was girt round by a leathern girdle, and for food he had 
nothing but what he could pick up in the desert: locusts, of which 
the untilled land in the East is full, and wild honey from the nests 
which the bees make in the hollows of the trees and rocks. After 
a long preparation in the desert, whither he had retired to be alone 
with God, he had come down to Jordan, as Elijah came out of the 
wilds of Gilead, and his vigorous denunciations of prevalent sins 



3o6 ' ALL HAIL ' 

as well as his ascetic habits and appearance, won him a wide hearing. 
When interest in this strong personality increased, the multitude 
began questioning John as to who he was and on whose authority 
he was teaching. John confessed, and denied not, that he was not 
the Messiah, a supposition which his powerful personality had awak- 
ened in the minds of men. His fame spread through the country, 
and at Jerusalem, the centre of religious and national life, people 
became curious to find out all about this new prophet and what 
was his message to his generation. Many Pharisees and Sadducees 
came, with other people, to the Jordan, where John was baptizing, 
and were unsparingly condemned by the Baptist. The common 
people were baptized by him ; the Pharisees and Sadducees were 
not, probably being repelled by his fierce denunciations. John said 
of himself : T am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make 
straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias' (St. 
John i. verse 2^). John's duty was clearly shown to him by God. 
He was called upon to prepare the way for the Messiah. John was 
only the forerunner and servant, and he said of the Messiah : 'He it 
is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet 
I am not worthy to unloose' (St. John i. verse 27). 

This striking and original preacher from the wilderness said of 
himself (St. Matthew iii. verse 11) : T indeed baptize you with 
water unto repentance : but he that cometh after me is mightier than 
I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with 
the Holy Ghost, and with fire.' 

To see this Jordan where John was baptizing is to see a thing 
of beauty. The place where nowadays all pilgrims from distant 
lands all over the earth assemble to be baptized is said to be the 
very spot where John the Baptist carried on his ministry. The 
water is blue and the banks are green with graceful and bright 
green foliage. In the desert country near the Dead Sea, which is 
not far off, nature appears to be a lifeless thing, arid and bare and 
sandy. All the sweeter is the surprise when the Jordan breaks upon 
our view, winding along like a green ribbon through the sun- 
parched landscape. John was baptizing at Bethabara, literally mean- 
ing house of passing over (for which the R.V. reads Bethany). 
This is probably the same as Bethbarah mentioned in Gideon's mes- 
sage in Judges vii. verse 24. This spot about which we are speak- 
ing, if we may be allowed to assume a difficult identification, is surely 
most beautiful. Green banks lie almost level with the waters of the 
Jordan, that unique river, different from any other the wide world 
over, which is dreamy and dignified, graceful and grand, teeming 
with tenderest memories. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE ' 307 

And just here let me mention something about this Jordan in 
connection with the pilgrims of to-day. Thousands of these yearly- 
tread the pass between Jerusalem and Jericho, which bears the name 
of Wady Kelt. Russians, members of the ancient Eastern Church, 
are perhaps in greatest number. In their picturesque Russian na- 
tional costume, much the worse for wear, they wend their way along 
on foot under the broiling sun, some of them barefoot, others still 
in snow-shoes. In order to arrive at the Jordan at Easter time, 
they are obliged to leave their native villages weeks beforehand, 
often in mid-winter, and this makes it necessary to pile on all their 
warm garments, which naturally they find, on arrival in that land 
of sun, uncomfortably burdensome. Most of them in one hand 
carry a kettle to make tea, without which no Russian can live, while 
in the other they carry a bottle in readiness to fill with water from 
the river Jordan, which is considered sacred. This they take back 
to Russia as the greatest of treasures to those who are waiting for 
their return in the home country. Most of them, too, are provided 
with a pilgrim's staff, attached to which they carry a palm or green 
bough, in remembrance of the banks of the Jordan. It is a most 
impressive sight to see these thousands of men and women, filled 
with reverence and regardless of hardships, bent on their pilgrim- 
age, cheerfully undergoing many privations and untold fatigue dur- 
ing their long and tedious journey. It is uplifting to realise the 
spirit of simple faith that sends them forth to the Holy Land, the 
spirit to satisfy which they are willing to risk their lives. One is 
filled with admiration, admitting that to them their religion, with 
its intense reality, is everything. Many of these people literally die 
by the roadside every year. 

These pilgrims, moved by faith, yield to the over-mastering desire 
to see with their own eyes the places hallowed by the actual 
presence of Our Lord when on earth. These humble folk cause one 
to think a great deal. The question arises in one's own mind, 
What are we willing to suffer for Christ? H'ow much do we put 
ourselves out for Christ? How much (or how little, we had better 
say) do we accomplish in our lukewarm attendance at church, all 
arranged and made easy for us? This, however, is a digression. 
Let us hurry back to the place where we see not only the Russians, 
but thousands of other pilgrims from distant climes and countries. 
I feel tempted to describe to my readers the dark-skinned and pic- 
turesque Bedouins, whom one also finds trudging along this same 
main route. The Bedouins, however, are not moved by the same 
purpose and the same faith. Here one may see gangs of camels 
laden with coal and coke, which they fetch from the mountains of 



3o8 'ALL HAIL^ 

Gilead beyond the Jordan, reaching almost to the Dead Sea. On 
the fields on either side mother-camels are grazing, accompanied by 
their baby-camels, such darlings, with large intelligent and un- 
derstanding eyes. 

On the other side of the Jordan is the very same country where 
Elijah was wont to wander, and where he was fed by the ravens; 
and not far off the old paved Roman road is still in existence. It 
was also in those neighbouring mountain ranges that King David 
hid from his pursuers. We are in no danger of losing, nor would 
we wish to lose, any of the links of the chain which binds us to 
the days of old. The religious experience of to-day is vitally united 
to the religious experience of the past. One corroborates the 
other; and this same road we remember is made sacred by the foot- 
steps of our Blessed Saviour, for on more than one occasion He 
must have come this way. 

The people who came to John's baptism asked the Baptist what 
they ought to do, and he answered them thus : 'He that hath two 
coats let him impart to him that hath none : and he that hath meat, 
let him do likewise' (St. Luke iii. verse ii), which, in other words, 
is wise advice on the importance of leading unselfish lives, of living 
for the common good. 

Then we see the publicans who came to be baptized inquiring in 
their turn. These latter were people who collected customs and 
duties for the Romans, and were prone to extortion. They asked 
John : 'Master, what shall we do ?' The answer they got was : 
'Exact no more than that which is appointed you' (St. Luke iii. 
verses 12, 13). 

The soldiers then demanded of him what they were to do, and 
the answer came 'Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, 
and be content with your wages' (St. Luke iii. verse 14). So to 
each class, John pointed out its special temptations, and its duty of 
overcoming them. 

We now come to the supreme moment when Jesus came from 
Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized by him : the sinless 
Jesus came, identifying himself with sinners that He might become 
their Saviour — in other words, the purpose of this baptism, was that 
baptism should be the preparation for entrance into the Kingdom of 
God, for the sinless King, as well as for His faulty subjects. Till 
Jesus came to be baptized by John, John had not recognised that 
Jesus was the Messiah, but he did recognise that his Cousin 
was a higher and holier man than himself, and he felt himself 
altogether unworthy to baptize Him. John forbade Christ saying: 
T have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?' (St. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 309 

Matthew iii. verse 14). And Jesus answered and said unto him: 
"Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all right- 
eousness' (Le.^ John's baptism regarded as part of the Old Cove- 
nant). 

And here we look at our beautiful pictures. St. Mark i. verses 
10 and II says: 'And straightway coming up out of the water, he 
saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending 
upon him: and there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' Till the descent of 
the Holy Spirit, John did not realise that Jesus was the Messiah; 
the descent of the Spirit made him certain. T saw,' says John 
(v.'hich means that he gives his evidence as an eye-witness of what 
actually occurred). St. John i. verse 32: 'I saw the Spirit descend- 
ing from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew 
him not : but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said 
unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and re- 
maining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy 
Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.' 
Jesus and John being already near relations, and their mothers close 
friends, were known to each other, and what John means when he 
says he Tcnew him not,' is this, T knew him not to be the Messiah.' 

In St. Luke's Gospel (iii. verse 22) we read: 'And a voice 
came from heaven, v^^hich said, Thou are my beloved Son, in thee 
I am well pleased.' From the time of His baptism certainly, Jesus 
had the full consciousness that He was the Messiah, and the full 
resolve to establish the Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by John the 
Baptist, purified and freed from popular misconceptions. 

John the Baptist was not allowed to end his life peacefully. His 
mission was fulfilled when he had prepared his countrymen for 
the coming of the Messiah. H'erod the Tetrarch had listened often 
to John the Baptist. The Baptist had openly shown his disapproval 
of Herod's marriage with Herodias, his own brother's wife. The 
Gospel of St. Mark (vi. verse 17), says that 'Herod himself had sent 
forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison, for Herod- 
ias' sake, his brother Philip's wife.' John the Baptist had told 
Herod that he was offending against God's law. Therefore, Hero- 
dias, resenting this, had a bitter grudge against the prophet. Had 
she been able she would have killed him (St. Mark vi. verse 20) : 
'For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an 
holy, and observed him' (R.V., kept him safe) ; 'and when he 
heard him, he did many things' (he was much perplexed, R.V.), 
'and heard him gladly,' i.e., he felt the godly spirit of the Baptist's 
fearless appeal. 



310 * ALL HAIL' 

Unfortunately, however, an opportunity came for that wicked 
woman, Herodias, to do her worst. It was Herod's birthday; 
he 'made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates 
(chief men) of Galilee, and when the daughter of the said Herodias 
came in and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, 
the king said unto the damsel. Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, 
and I will give it thee.' She went forth unto her mother, and asked 
her what she was to ask, and her mother, burning for revenge, 
promptly said, 'The head of John the Baptist' Straightway with 
haste the damsel went unto the king, and stated that she desired 
him to give her, in a charger, the head of John the Baptist. The 
• king was exceedingly sorry, yet, for his oath's sake, and for the 
sake of them that sat with him, he would not reject her. He or- 
dered one of his bodyguard to bring John the Baptist's head. This 
man went to the prison and beheaded him. He brought in the 
head of John the Baptist in a charger (i.e., a dish), gave it to the 
damsel, and she presented it to her mother. 

When this terrible crime got noised abroad, John's disciples 
came and took up his corpse and laid it in a tomb. John had 
brought on himself this death, by fearlessly doing his duty and 
deliberately rebuking the vicious king for his sin, a rebuke which 
was the mandate of God. It is quite possible that the question might 
occur to him, just as it does to all of us, why God allowed him to 
languish in Herod's gloomy prison, while our Lord was actually then 
on earth, He who had only to say the word, and to set him' free 
immediately. God's ways are not our ways. We must accept such 
apparent victories of evil as the mysterious part of His wise pur- 
poses, who alone sees the end from the beginning. 

As to John the Baptist, we sympathise with him in what he had 
suffered in the dungeon — he, the open-air prophet, he, who had 
roamed about for so long in the freedom of the wilderness. We 
read that John, while in prison, had sent two of his disciples to ask 
of Jesus, 'Art thou he that should come, or do we look for an- 
other?' This doubt of our Lord's Messiahship was very natural, 
and may have come partly from the distorted reports of Jesus' 
teaching John heard in the prison, and partly from the long gloom 
of his hopeless imprisonment, or the doubt may have been merely 
on the part of the disciples and not felt by John. Jesus answered 
by pointing to his works : 'The blind receive their sight and the 
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are 
raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.' Doubt- 
less the reply of Jesus, the appeal to the facts, convinced not only 
John, but his disciples, and comforted the great prophet before his 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 311 

death. One of the earliest and best of Italian artists has painted 
this picture we have before us. The original of this superb work of 
art is in that glorious church of Santa Croce, that storehouse of ex- 
quisite beauty. The meaning of this picture is the triumph of good- 
ness even in death. 

We have spoken about Baptism among the Jews as a rite of 
initiation, and we have seen what was the baptism of John. That 
baptism was symbolical and preparatory, and not sacramental. Just 
as our Lord for a short time at the opening of His ministry con- 
tinued John's preaching, so for a time the disciples of Christ bap- 
tized as a continuance of the baptism of John. This baptism' was 
not 'into the name of the Lord Jesus.' 

We may observe that in sending out the Twelve Apostles, and in 
sending out the Seventy, our Lord gave no command to baptize. 
1 he reason is plain, if Baptism, till after our Lord's Resurrection, 
when the formal commission to baptize was given, was as we have 
said, preparatory to entrance into the Kingdom, a symbol, and not 
a sacrament that confers grace. Christian Baptism, as we possess 
it, begins with our Lord's great commission to His Church, when 
He met them by appointment on the mountain in Galilee, and com- 
manded them : 'Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost' (Matthew xxviii. verse 19). (R.V., 'Go ye therefore and 
make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name.') 

It was not till the Church received the gift of the Spirit at Pente- 
cost, that St. Peter urged the Jews to 'repent, and be baptized every 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, 
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost' (Acts ii. verse 38). 
Christian baptism then, being based on a distinct command of the 
Risen Lord, is binding on all Christians. It is a plain command, and 
was so understood by the first Christians who heard it given, and 
it has been so understood and carried out by the various branches 
of the universal Church of Christ ever since. 

Children are brought to baptism as an act of obedience to this 
command of Christ, and to deprive them of baptism' is to deprive 
them of the high privilege of membership in the Church of Christ, 
who said: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not, for such is the kingdom of God' (Mark x. verse 14). 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The Gospels (The Silent Years of Preparation — The Baptism — 
The Temptation — The Founding of the Church of Christ). 

In the beginning of last chapter we said that there was a gap 
in the recorded memories of Cur Lord's life from His twelfth to 
His thirtieth year. This is easily accounted for. The memories of 
the Apostles, who were with the Lord throughout His ministry, 
extended only to that ministry. Their witness-bearing consisted 
of what they saw and heard of His doings and His teachings dur- 
ing that period. There was a natural desire, however, to know 
something of our Lord's earlier life, and from His mother, and other 
sources, the facts as to His birth and infancy were obtained, and are 
recorded in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. That there 
is no distinct record after the twelfth year till the time of His bap- 
tism, is probably due to the fact that nothing evenful was known to 
the members of the Holy Family or to relations and friends. But 
there are allusions scattered through the narrative of the Gospels, 
and passages in our Lord's parables and other teachnigs, which 
when brought together give us some idea how these silent years of 
preparation were spent. 

It is plain, to begin with, that our Lord had a deeply religious 
mother, one whose mind was stored with the best of the contents of 
the Old Testament. To remember the Magnificat alone, is enough 
to assure us of this. That His mother was also a woman of rare 
thoughtfulness is proved by the way she pondered over her own 
mysterious experiences, and as time went on over her mysterious 
relationship as a human mother to her Divine Son. In such a 
thoughtful and meditative nature as our Lord's mother, it is not 
surprising to find the delicate and dignified reticence which revealed 
the secret of the wondrous birth only after many years, long after 
the Resurrection and Ascension. The impression she made is seen 
in the unanimous tradition that she remained till her death devoted 
to the life of virginity, to which she seems to have given herself 
by her betrothed's consent before the birth of our Lord {cf. Luke i. 
verse 34) . And not only was the Blessed Virgin a religious woman, 
but Joseph, the head of the household at Nazareth, was one that 
feared God, as we are told. 

312 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 313 

Under such influences the Child Jesus developed from childhood 
to youth, and from youth to manhood. He was well known to His 
fellow-villagers as Jesus the Carpenter (Mark vi. 3), working with 
Joseph at his trade. He attended the services of the Synagogue, 
and listened to the reading of Moses and the Prophets, and, at a 
later date, was in the habit of reading the lessons of Scripture 
Himself, when invited to do so by the niler of the Synagogue. His 
intimate knowledge of the Old Testament is evident throughout 
His teaching a knowledge which could only have been acquired by 
a life-long study. His frequent quotations from the Scriptures show 
that He generally used the Greek version, but that He was able to 
read them in the original Hebrew, such a passage as Matthew v. 
verse 18, Vv'ith such expressions as one jot or one tittle seem to show 
('jot,' the Greek 'iota,' represents 'yod,' which is the smallest letter 
in Hebrew ; 'tittle' represents one of the tiny horns by which He- 
brew letters are distinguished). 

Of our Lord's companions in His home life, and their relations 
vvith Him, there are very few indications. We gather that His 
four brothers and three sisters were really step-brothers and step- 
sisters, children of Joseph by a previous marriage (the view of St. 
Epiphanius supported by Lightfoot in England). Of these, the 
names of James and Jude are more familiar than those of Simon 
and Joses (i.e., Joseph) among our Lord's brethren. 

There were other influences that went to prepare our Lord's mind 
for His coming work. His sayings, especially in the Parables, re- 
veal extraordinary sympathy with, and knowledge of, humian char- 
acter, and a S3^mpathy scarcely less deep with external nature. The 
secret of His matchless sympathy was, that He saw God in both and 
both in God. He had entered with interest into every detail of the 
life of the mountain villages and the lakeside towns, and He used 
what He had observed to illustrate His teaching. He saw the evil 
in the world better than any one, but He loved the world neverthe- 
less and longed to deliver it. This longing must have been work- 
ing in His mind for years, before He came to John to be baptized 
as the introduction to the work of His Messiahship. As to His 
sympathy with nature, there is ample evidence in the illustrations 
with which He filled His teaching. A sensitive eye and heart is 
revealed in such allusions as those to the lilies of the field and the 
birds of the air. And above all these influences, and conditioning 
them all, was the supreme influence, the mighty mystery of His 
union with God, which gave Him a constant and intense conscious- 
ness of God's nearness, which, even as we can dimly perceive it in 
the brief and fragmentary records of His words and deeds in the 



314 'ALL HAIL' 

Gospels, is seen to be altogether unique ; that is, like nothing that had 
been in the world before or has been seen since. 

Our Lord had insisted on John's baptizing Him, though John, 
perceiving how greatly superior to himself was this new candidate 
for baptism, was unwilling. As He came up out of the water, the 
Vision of the dove-like Holy Spirit and the Voice from Heaven 
were given as unmistakable proof of His Messiahship. With these 
signs the life of our Lord as the Messiah had begim. The first 
step in that life was not what might have been expected. The 
Spirit which had descended upon Him' at His Baptism drove Him 
into the Wilderness. St. Mark says, in chapter i. verses 12, 13: 
'And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And 
he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and 
was with the wild beasts ; and the angels ministered unto him.* 
The wilderness was inhabited by wild animals. Our Lord lived in 
their midst. They must have found very soon, by experience, that 
He meant them no harm; that He was not come to hunt them or 
to slaughter them, like most men they were accustomed to meet. 

Our Lord's Life is the one Perfect Life. It sets before us, as 
our example, God's ideal of man perfectly realised. The imitation 
of Christ is admitted by all Christians to be the duty of His fol- 
lowers. In this particular point of the proper attitude of man to 
animals, that example of our Lord is especially necessary. The 
prophet Isaiah, in chapter xi. verses 6-9, sets forth, as a part of 
the bright future towards which man is travelling, the reign of 
peace, not only between man and man, but also between man and 
animal. And this confidence of the wild animals in our Lord has 
not stopped at Him, but has extended itself to some of his 
followers. A long series of stories witnesses to the peaceful friend- 
ship that has existed between holy hermits, in the early ages of 
Christianity, and the wild animals with whom they were brought 
into contact. A more modern instance, and one really well au- 
thenticated, is St. Francis of Assisi, whose influence over wild ani- 
mals, even over such wild beasts as the wolf of Agobis, whom he 
called his brother, the wolf, is well known. 

While still in His boyhood, the tokens of our Lord's consciousness 
of His unique relation to the Father were unmistakable. But in the 
deliberate step of coming to John for baptism, we see His resolve 
to enter upon His public ministry, and the witness of the baptism 
left H'im no doubt that He was to be the Messiah, the King and 
the Saviour who was to establish the Kingdom of God. With the 
resolve to carry out this mission, the question must have arisen: 
how was it to be done? There were many ways that would sug- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 31S 

gest themselves, and the most obvious was to use the Messianic 
expectation as He found it among the people; to make concessions 
to, or to accept, the conception of an earthly kingdom founded on 
force, which was firmly established, as we have seen, by the great 
national success under Judas Maccabseus in the past, and by the 
pressure of the scornful Roman nile in the present. Our Lord was 
conscious of new powers in Himself. With the consciousness 
came the question how He was to use them. He felt that the Spirit 
of God in Him could give Him power to do anything. 

Then there came another spirit, the Spirit of Evil, personified in 
part of the Old Testament as well as in the New, under the name 
of Satan, and began to suggest a use of the powers given by the 
good Spirit of God, which was not in accordance with that good 
Spirit. Our Lord was human, as well as Divine ; Perfect Man 
as well as Perfect God. His humanity made the Temptation, or 
testing time, possible and necessary. His purpose of establishing, 
as the Messiah, the Kingdom of God, required that a definite plan 
of action should be thought out; and solitude, apart from all human 
advice or interference, as the position to which the Holy Spirit 
directed our Lord. Good men have before now been tempted to 
seek to attain to a good end by means that are not good, and many 
have yielded to the temptation. This kind of temptation is that 
which the Evil Spirit uses to assail high natures, which are above 
the reach of common forms of selfishness or self-indulgence. The 
human nature of our Lord made temptation possible. His mission 
as the Messiah made it necessary. The key to the right under- 
standing of our Lord's Temptation is to be found in the inspired 
words of Scripture (Hebrews iv. verse 15) : 'For we have not an 
high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.' 

Our temptations, like those of our Lord, begin by inner impulses 
formed under unseen influences, . and issuing in the inner choice 
between good and evil. The battle is fought, and lost or won within 
us, before the results of the inner struggle find expression in out- 
ward life. The form taken by the accounts of our Lord's Tempta-- 
tion in the Gospels comes from an Eastern mould. A symbolical 
picture is given of a real experience, probably because the same 
shape had been given to the story of the Temptation and Fall of 
Man in Genesis. 

After fasting forty days, our Lord's human imagination was 
naturally filled with visions of food, for which his exhausted body 
felt an intense craving. The stones of the wilderness to hungry eyes 
might suggest loaves of bread. The evil spirit used the opportunity 



3i6 'ALL HAIL' 

(MattheAv iv. verse 3). 'And when the tempter came to him, he 
said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made 
bread.' Our Lord must have been almost worn out with His forty 
days' fast, and had He hesitated, and had He parleyed with temp- 
tation, He might have said to Himself, surely it is right to use the 
Messiah's power to preserve the Messiah's life. But He felt, as He 
always after felt, that He could not rightly use His wondrous pow- 
ers to help Himself, but only to help others. His answer to the 
Evil Spirit conveys a profound lesson to us. He used the Bible, 
safely stored in His memory, to overcome this subtle temptation 
(Matthew iv. verse 4) : 'But he answered and said. It is written, 
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God.' 

This is a happy use of one of our Lord's best-loved books — Deut- 
eronomy (viii. verse 3). This was the first Temptation. The 
sword of the Spirit — the Word of God — in our Lord's hand, repulsed 
the tempter's attack. But the evil spirit had not exhausted his 
devices. He took Jesus with him in imagination to a pinnacle of 
the Temple, and urged H'im to cast Himself down, and leave it to 
God to bring Him safely out of the danger. This would have 
been to substitute presumption for faith; to break God's natural 
law, and to expect God to prevent the consequences by direct inter- 
vention. Again, our Lord used the sword of the Spirit to repulse 
this new attack (Matthew iv. verse 7) : '. . . . It is written 
again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' This is a fine 
reminiscence of Deuteronomy vi. 16. 

Once more the evil spirit took our Lord up in imagination to an 
exceeding high mountain, from which a vision shaped itself of all 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. His offer was, 
'All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and wor- 
ship me' (Matthew iv. verse 9). The meaning of this was that 
Jesus was to take a short cut to gain power and wealth for the good 
end He had in view, and to do this would have been to serve and 
worship the Evil One, albeit for the establishment of God's king- 
dom on earth. This would have been the case had he used the 
Messianic hope of the Jews, by putting Himself at their head and 
expelling the Romans, and so establishing by the sword an earthly 
kingdom. Our Lord again used His knowledge of the Bible to re- 
pulse the Tempter. Matthew iv. verse 10: 'It is written, Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' 
This is taken from Deuteronomy x. verse 20. 

The lessons for us in our Lord's temptation are manifold. We 
can only find space for a few. The first lesson is promptness in our 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 317 

resistance to evil. We must be ready to resist the moment temp- 
tation comes. Secondly we must be ready with our Bible. We must 
know and love it so well that it has become embedded in our 
memory, so that we can refer to it immediately in all the difficulties 
of life. We must have formed the habit of studying it with this 
practical purpose, and gained facility in using its contents. Prompt- 
ness in resisting evil is St. James's advice : 'Resist the devil, and he 
will flee from you' (James iv. verse 7). As our Lord overcame, 
so are we also in our turn to overcome, obtaining help through His 
example. 

Matthew iv. verse 11: 'Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, 
angels came and ministered unto him.' 

After the Temptation our Lord returned to the Jordan valley, 
and seems to have remained in that neighbourhood, which was not 
very far from Nazareth, for some time. Then one day John, who 
was still baptizing, saw Jesus coming to him, and looking on Him 
intently said, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sin of the world' (John i. verse 29). Nothing appears to have 
followed. These and many other words of the Baptist reveal a re- 
markable identification of the suffering Servant of God (predicted 
in Isaiah liii.) with Jesus, whom he had baptized. 

John i. verses 35-42: 'Again the next day after John stood, 
and two of his disciples ; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he 
saith. Behold the Lamb of God ! And the two disciples heard him 
speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them 
following, and saith unto them. What seek ye? They said unto 
him. Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where 
dwellest Thou? He saith unto them. Come and see. They came 
and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day: for it was 
about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak, 
and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first 
findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have 
found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he 
brought him to Jesus.' 

The passage which we have just given describes an event which 
seemed without much significance at the time, but was fraught with 
far-reaching consequences. When John and Andrew, the two dis- 
ciples of the Baptist, left their master to join themselves to Jesus, 
the Christian Church came into existence. These two were the 
first Christians, the first disciples of the new teacher, whom by the 
next day they had recognised to be the Messiah. John and An- 
drew had been trained by the Baptist, and they joined Jesus as 
the result of the Baptist's suggestion. He did not tell them to go. 



3i8 'ALL HAIL' 

but we can see that he meant them to follow Jesus when, earnestly 
gazmg on Him, he said, 'Behold the Lamb of God.' 

To these two first Christians were soon added more, for the 
Christian Church began to grow as soon as it was born. Philip 
and Nathaniel were among the first. This was only the beginning, 
and the Church was not yet fully organized. The next step took 
place at Capernaum some time after, when Jesus called Simon 
Peter, and Andrew his brother, to leave their fishing on the lake 
and all their possessions, and follow Him, With them he called 
their partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee; and these 
four disciples, thus separated from the world to give themselves 
to Jesus, were the nucleus of the visible Church. These were the 
four chief Apostles. We give St. Mark's account in chapter i. 
verses 16-20: 'Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw 
Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea : for they 
were fishers. And Jesus said unto them. Come ye after me and, 
I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they 
forsook their nets, and followed him. And when he had gone a 
little farther thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John 
his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. And 
straightway he called them : and they left their father Zebedee in 
the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.' 

Then came the calling of Matthew, the customs' collector at 
Capernaum, of which we must give a fuller account presently; and 
this was quickly followed by the call of the rest of the Twelve 
Apostles. The call to leave their homes and their business to be 
with Christ, and to be sent forth in His service, was made first, 
as we have seen, to two pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, 
James and John, and was gradually extended to Matthew and to 
the rest until the number reached twelve. We give St. Mark's 
account of the call (chapter iii, verses 13-19) : 'And he goeth up 
into a mountain, and calleth unto him' whom he would : and they 
came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with 
him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have 
power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils : and Simon he sur- 
named Peter; and James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother 
of James; and he surnamed them' Boanerges, which is. The sons 
of thunder: and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Mat- 
thew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, 
and Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, which also be- 
trayed him.' 

As to these names, it is enough to say that Bartholomew (ue., 
the son of Tolmai) is identified with Nathanael; Simon the Cana- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 319 

ansean (R.V.) was one of the Zealots; Judas Iscariot was a native 
of Kerioth in Judaea. Of what class were these twelve Apostles 
composed? Though they belonged to the middle and lower classes, 
some of them were in comfortable positions. The fishermen were 
owners of boats on the lake, and Zebedee, the father of James and 
John, had 'hired servants.' John had an acquaintanceship with the 
high priest and had a house at Jerusalem. Matthew was a cus- 
toms' collector. Simon the Canaanite belonged to the nationalist 
party. The Twelve were far from understanding our Lord's teach- 
ing at once. It was given to them to know the mysteries of the 
Kingdom' as He told them, but only very gradually. After some 
training he sent them out as Missionaries — i.e., Apostles — to the 
country parts to do a work of healing, when He was not able to 
go Himself, and to preach, saying: The Kingdom of Heaven is 
at hand.' This simple heralding of the coming of the King in His 
Kingdom, seems to have been the whole Apostolic message; at 
first probably because the Apostles were not capable as yet of more 
advanced teaching. 

A further mission is mentioned in one Gospel only. St. Luke 
tells of the sending of the Twelve, and he also tells us of the 
sending of the Seventy. The instructions our Lord gave are prac- 
tically the same in both cases. This second sending seems to in- 
dicate the missionary use by our Lord of a wider circle of disciples. 
A great deal of our Lord's time appears to have been spent in the 
direction of the inner circle of His disciples. One of the main 
purposes of His life was to educate a brotherhood of followers, 
v/ho v/ould form the nucleus of the Christian Church, and, pos- 
sessed by their Lord. 

spirit, would continue and extend the Incarnation among mankind. 
The Incarnation begun with Christ was to be extended, as far as 
might be, to every one who accepted Christ as Lord, and the body 
of believers were to supply a body for the spirit of Christ, and so 
to represent Him on earth, after Lie had ascended to the right hand 
of God. 

Andrew's words to his brother, Simon Peter, 'We have found 
the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ' (John i. verse 
41), fairly express the attitude of the disciples towards the new 
Master whom' they had found. Living continually with Him, going 
about with Him from place to place, they came to know Him well, 
and were brought very fully under His influence. They had a 
genuine affection for Him, and a deep reverence, though they did 
not understand Him. Indeed, they continually misunderstood both 
His teaching and His actions : they were unable to rise to His 



320 'ALL HAIL' 

level. This was one of His incessant trials. The imperfection of 
their understanding limited their sympathy. They drew from their 
Master, not once or twice, such remonstrances as this: 'Are ye also 
yet without understanding?' (Matthew xv. verse i6). He had to 
explain His meaning to them again and again, as we learn from 
the Gospels, which, be it remembered, do not profess to be com- 
plete histories of our Lord's life, but merely fragmentary remin- 
iscences of what His disciples had seen and heard, and handed 
down as an oral tradition years before the Gospels were written. 

Our Lord's human yearning for sympathy found, after a time, 
some answer in three disciples (two of whom were the first to 
come to Him), Peter, James, and John, who became a sort of 
inner circle in the Brotherhood, and to whom our Lord looked for 
support on special occasions. One of them, John, rose from 
discipleship to intimate friendship, and was known as the disciple 
whom Jesus loved. John is the disciple who was 'lying on Jesus' 
breast' (John xiii. verse 25) at the Last Supper, through whom 
always, as on this occasion, the other disciples sought any special 
information they desired from their Lord. John was the disciple 
to whom, as His most trusted friend, Jesus, from the Cross, con- 
fided the care of His beloved Mother; and John took her home 
after that heart-rending agony, which only a devoted mother's 
love could know. 

John's father's name was Zebedee, and that of his mother was 
Salome. It is most probable that she was the sister of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary. We know that she was one of the good women who 
occupied herself with the comfort of Jesus, and who believed in 
Him from the first. 

A short time ago we looked at a picture of St. John. In works 
of art we see him always pictured with an eagle. Each of the 
four Evangelists has his own special emblem. In regard to the 
eagle of St. John, we know that this bird easily soars to the 
greatest heights, and delights to do so. It is a beautiful thought 
that our Evangelist also is one who loved to soar upward towards 
heaven, and finds his native atmosphere there. This friend who 
lay on Jesus' breast knew most of his Master's heart, and best 
reveals it in his words. John had a far higher and truer conception 
of his Lord's Divinity than any of the other Evangelists. This 
conception is set forth very finely in the beginning of his Gospel. 
John i. verses 1-5: 'In the beginning was the Word, and' the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the be- 
ginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him 
was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 321 

life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and 
the darkness comprehended it not.' 

Not less beautiful are his words about our Lord in the beginning 
of his first Epistle, chapter i. verses 1-3: 'That which was from 
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our 
eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, 
of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have 
seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, 
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that 
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also 
may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the 
lather, and with his Son Jesus Christ.' 

We have spoken about St. John, who was one of the four chief 
Apostles. His brother James occupies a minor place, as does 
Peter's brother, Andrew. Peter himself was the first of the 
Apostles in active life, as John was first in thought and feeling; 
Peter was a man of great energy and promptitude in action. Our 
Lord, whose marvellous insight at once read the character of a 
man, saw this when Andrew first brought his brother to Him 
(John i. verse 42) : 'And when Jesus beheld him, he said .... 
thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.' 
The meaning of this was that Peter would be a rock in the strength 
of his devotion to a cause he espoused. But temptation disclosed 
many defects in the rock-man. He proved unstable again and 
again as we shall see ; yet always returned to his first position, and 
in the end justified the nairie which the Lord had given him. 

Peter's chief weaknesses were pride, rash self-confidence, and 
fear of ridicule, and till those were removed by his heartfelt re- 
pentance after the great denial, he was hindered in the following 
of his Lord. His Lord's free forgiveness and generous trust after 
his failure made him a new man. He ceased to trust himself, or 
think of himself. He trusted in and thought only of his Lord. 
But he retained the innate weak tendency of his character, and in- 
curred the rebuke of St. Paul (Galatians ii. verse 11). Peter, how- 
ever, was the first to confess his Lord's divinity (Matthew xvi. 16), 
and on St. Peter, as thus confessing his Lord's divinity, the Church 
was founded, Peter, as the representative Apostle, sharing all 
powers with the rest. 

Of the many traditions which have gathered round St. Peter, 
one of the most touching and the most in keeping with his character, 
is that which represents him as fleeing from the persecution in 
Rome, and met on the road by our Lord, who said : T go to Rome 
to be crucified again for thee.' Whereupon, the tradition tells us, 



Z22 'ALL HAIL' 

St. Peter turned back and fearlessly met his death by crucifixion. 
The story tells us that he thought it too much honour to be crucified 
in the same manner as his Lord, and by his own request, he was 
nailed on the cross with his head down. 

(Having given some account of the calling of the Christian 
Church, and the sending forth of the first Apostles or Mission- 
aries, to preach the Kingdom of God, for which purpose we have 
taken occurrences somewhat out of their order in point of time, 
we will now prepare the way for some account of our Lord's Life, 
by considering two of its characteristics. His Life consisted of His 
Words and His Deeds. Looking at His Words, we find He very 
commonly chose Parables, as the most effective means of impress- 
ing His teaching upon His hearers. Looking at His Deeds, we 
find that He taught most powerfully by the wonderful works or 
signs which we call the Miracles. 

The shortest description of a Parable is, an earthly story with 
a heavenly meaning. The word Parable is derived from a Greek 
word, meaning, to put a thing beside another, to compare. To take 
the things that are known to explain the things which are less 
known, or unknown, is a method which commends itself both to 
the- reason and the experience; and this is the method of the 
Parables. The familiar things of earth are used in our Lord's 
parables to suggest and to explain the unfamiliar spiritual things 
of heaven. So intimately were parables interwoven in our Lord's 
teaching, that we are sometimes told by the Evangelists: 'Without 
a parable spake He not unto them' (Matthew xiii. verse 34; Mark 
iv. verse 34). 

Parables were perfectly familiar to our Lord's hearers. Easterns 
are accustomed to this mode of teaching. The love of the story, 
common to all mankind, is specially strong in the East, and our 
Lord's parables used the love of the story to attract the mind, 
and to introduce it insensibly to deeper and more difficult things. 
Our Lord had a further special reason for using the parable. The 
story form was a magnet to all, but only those who used their 
own minds, and only those who had ears to hear, could reach the 
meaning. It must be remembered that our Lord wrote nothing, 
as far as we know, except once when He stooped down and wrote 
upon the fround. His teaching was spoken, and He trusted to the 
memory of those who heard it, and the wonderful Gospels are 
the justification of His trust. 

What has been pictured in the imagination is by most people 
more easily remembered than mere words, for the picture in the 
mind serves to call up by association the words by which it was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 323 

first impressed on the imagination. Again, words are continually 
changing their meaning, whereas the life of man and the life of 
nature are essentially the same at all times and in all lands, and 
the pictures of life and nature by which our Lord conveyed spirit- 
ual truth are as lasting as mankind. Moreover, while the im- 
mediate meaning to the first hearers must be fully grasped, there is 
an inexhaustible depth of meaning in our Lord's parables, separat- 
ing them from other parables, which enables them to supply the 
needs, not of one generation, but of all generations, and this may 
be ascribed to the fact of the mystery of our Lord's double 
nature, that He was God as well as Man. 

There are no parables, strictly speaking, in St. John's Gospel, 
though there are a number of sayings resembling parables, as when 
our Lord speaks of Himself as the Good Shepherd, the Door of 
the Sheep, the True Vine, the Light of the World. The parables 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke have in common are three: the Sower, 
the Grain of Mustard Seed, the Wicked Husbandmen. The par- 
ables Matthew and Luke have in common are two: the Leaven, 
and the Lost Sheep. 

A single parable is peculiar to Mark: the seed springing up im- 
perceptibly. Matthew has ten parables peculiar to his Gospel and 
Luke has eighteen. The latter collection is the largest one, and 
it contains those most beautiful parables, the Prodigal Son and 
the Good Samaritan. 

There are thirty of our Lord's parables or thereabouts. A list 
of them may be helpful. We use Trench's Notes on the Parables. 

The sower (Matthew xiii. verse 3; Mark iv. verse 3; Luke viii. 
verse 5). 

The tares (Matthew xiii. verse 24). 

The grain of mustard seed (Matthew xiii. verse 31; Mark iv. 
verse 31; Luke xiii. verse 19). 

The leaven (Matthew xiii. verse ^Z) Luke xiii. verse 21). 

The hidden treasure (Matthew xiii. verse 44). 

The precious pearl (Matthew, xiii. verse 45). 

The net (Matthew xiii. verse 47). 

The unmerciful servant -(Matthew xviii. verse 23). 

The labourers in the vineyard (Matthew xx. verse i). 

The two sons (Matthew xxi. verse 28). 

The vineyard (Matthew xxi. verse 2>Z', Mark xii. verse i; Luke 
XX. verse 9). 

The marriage feast (Matthew xxii. verse i). 

The ten virgins (Matthew xxv. verse i). 

The talents (Matthew xxv. verse 14). 



324 'ALL HAIL' 

The seed springing up imperceptibly (Mark iv. verse 26). 

The two debtors (Luke vii. verse 41). 

The good Samaritan (Luke x. verse 30). 

The friend at midnight (Luke xi. verse 5). 

The rich fool (Luke xii. verse 16). 

The barren fig-tree (Luke xiii. verse 6). 

The great supper (Luke xiv. verse 15). 

The lost sheep (Luke xv. verse 4; Matthev/ xviii, verse 12). 

The lost piece of money (Luke xv. verse 8). 

The prodigal son (Luke xv. verse 11). 

The dishonest steward (Luke xvi. verse i). 

The rich man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. verse 19). 

The chief seats (Luke xiv. verse 7). 

The unprofitable servants (Luke xvii. verse 7). 

The unjust judge (Luke xviii. verse i). 

The Pharisee and the publican (Luke xviii. verse 9). 

The pounds (Luke xix. verse 12). 

We now turn to the miracles which were an essential part of our 
Lord's teaching. His purpose was to reveal God. 'No man hath 
seen God at any time; the only begotten Son ('God only begotten/ 
R.M.), which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him' 
(John i. 18). The whole narrative of the Gospels is so closely in- 
terwoven with miracles that it is impossible to retain an unmutilated 
picture of the historic Christ if the miracles be eliminated. Again, 
if the miracles be removed, the belief of Christians from the first 
that Christ was God is made altogether inexplicable. Our Lord 
claimed to be one with God, and if He was what He claimed to be 
there was nothing unnatural in His working of miracles. He was 
at home in two worlds, the seen and the unseen. He brought the 
powers of the unseen world to bear upon the seen. It is quite 
what might be expected that a superhuman personality like our 
Lord's should express itself in works as well as in words that are 
beyond the reach of man. There is a deep underlying unity in all 
the miracles of Christ, which comes from the fact that they 
proceed from and reveal the most profound miracle of all, the 
supernatural Person of Christ. 

A miracle means something wonderful, something that cannot be 
explained by the known laws of nature, but does not necessarily 
involve a breach of those known laws. It may be brought about 
by the action of higher laws as yet unknown to us. When the 
philosopher faces us with the statement that miracles do not oc- 
cur, he by no means establishes the position that they have never 
occurred in the past. The miracles of Christ are miracles which 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE , 325 

were, as we have seen, quite natural as the expression of His unique 
personality. And after all, is the statement that miracles do not 
occur tenable when carefully examined? Do we believe that only 
those events and those things are true which we are able to 
explain? Are we able to solve the mystery of the universe, or 
even the mystery of ourselves? What, where, and whence is the 
power of individual life in the seed? What, where, and whence 
is the human soul? What, and where, and whence is the life in a 
wheat plant or in a new-born infant? As we examine into familiar 
things like these, the element of mystery in them grows before our 
eyes. We realise with Hamlet that 'there are more things in heaven 
and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' 

A careful examination of the Gospels proves that we cannot pre- 
serve the vivid and convincing life of the narrative if we leave out 
the miracles, nor can we retain one class of miracles, the miracles 
of healing wrought upon man, and remove those wrought upon na- 
ture; for the earliest Gospel, that of St. Mark, contains these very 
nature miracles ingrained in the narrative. 

When we come to look at the miracles more closely, one by one, 
we shall see that they are as St. John calls them. Signs, visible 
actions by which the Invisible Being makes Himself known, and 
m.akes Himself known as Love. For compassionate love is the 
motive power of the miracles. 

The miracles may be divided into two classes : miracles wrought 
on man and miracles wrought on nature. In the case of man, 
faith was required in the persons for whom the miracle was per- 
formed. It was usually in the open air, by the lakeside, or on 
the slopes of the encircling hills, that Christ performed them. We 
read in the Gospels detailed accounts of over Thirty miracles; 
we shall presently give a list of them, and the places in the New 
Testament where to find them recorded in detail, but many more 
were performed which no attempt is made to describe, as the fol- 
lov/ing passage plainly intimates. 

Mark i. verses 32-34: 'And at even, when the sun did set, they 
brought unto him' all that were diseased, and them that were pos- 
sessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at the 
door. And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and 
cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because 
they knew him.' 

Miracles wrought on man: 

Cures of men possessed with devils (Matthew viii. verse 28; xv. 
verse 21; and xvii. verse 14; Mark i. verse 23). 

The Centurion's servant (Matthew viii. verse 5). 



326 * ALL HAIL ' 

The impotent man at Bethesda (John v. verse 9). 

The man with withered hand (Matthew xii. verse 10). 

The woman with spirit of infirmity for eighteen years (Luke 
xiii, II). 

The dumb man with a devil (Matthew ix. verse 32). 

The blind and dumb man with a devil (Matthew xii. verse 22). 

The boy possessed with a devil (Mark ix. verse 14). 

The demoniac in the country of the Gerasenes or Gadarenes 
(Mark V. i). 

. The healing of the paralysed (Matthey viii. verse 5, and ix. verse 
2). 

The canaanite woman's daughter (Mark vii. verse 25). 

The deaf man (Mark vii. verse 32). 

The blind (Matthew ix. verse 27, and xx. verse 30; Mark viii. 
verse 22; John ix. verse i). 

Blind Bartimaeus (Mark x. verse 46). 

The man with the dropsy (Luke xiv. verse 2). 

Peter's wife's mother (Matthew viii. verse 14). 

The issue of blood (Matthew ix. verse 20). 

The lepers (Matthew viii. verse 3; Mark i. verse 40; Luke xvii. 
verse 11). 

The healing of the High Priest's servant's ear (Luke xxii. verse 
SO). 

The recovery of nobleman's son at Capernaum (John iv. verse 
46). 

Many of these miracles of healing were very wonderful — e.g., 
healing of leprosy with the touch or by the word of power; the 
removal of hopeless paralysis by a word. But the supreme in- 
stances of Divine power shown in miracles wrought on man are the 
three cases of raising the dead to life: the raising of Jairus's 
daughter (Mark v. verses 35-43), the raising from the bier of the 
only son of the widow of Nain (Luke vii. verse 11), the raising 
from the grave of Lazarus, four days dead (John xi, verse 43)-. • 

The miracles wrought upon nature were: 

The stilling of the storm (Matthew viii. verse 26). 

The walking on the sea (Matthew xiv. verse 25). 

The blasting of the fig-tree (Matthew xxi. verse 18). 

The turning of water into wine at Cana (John ii. verse i). 

The feeding of five thousand (Matthew xiv. verse 19).. 

The feeding of four thousand (Matthew xv. verse 32). 

There are also miracles, which might be miracles or might be 
Cases of our Lord's wonderful wisdom, such as the great draught 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 327 

of fishes (Luke v. verse i, and John xxi. verse 6), and the finding 
of the coin in the fish's mouth (Matthew xvii. verse 24). 

A point which must not be forgotten is that the last great miracle 
of the Resurrection helps our understanding of, and faith in, all the 
other miracles. The proofs of the Resurrection are cumulative. 
We have the evidence of St. Paul in his great Epistles to the uni- 
versal acceptance by Christians of the Revelation of the Risen 
Lord, and the corroboration, at a later date, by the recollections of 
the Lord's appearances recorded in the Gospels. We have also the 
evidence of a sudden change of world-wide importance, by which 
the fearful and dismayed disciples of the crucified Christ were con- 
verted into the fearless and confident believers, the watchword of 
whose teaching was summed up by St. Paul's Athenian adversaries 
as 'J^sus and the Resurrection.' 

To this evidence may be added the taking of the first day of the 
week, the Lord's Day, as St. John calls it in the earliest of his 
writings, as the sacred day of the Christian Church, which can only 
be explained by the actual appearances which proved the fact of the 
Resurrection and made the new day and the new Church pre- 
dominant over the old. 

Now, the evidence which has verified the facts of the supreme 
miracle of the Resurrection, substantiates the lesser evidence for 
the miracles of the Gospel. It is probable, and natural, that He 
who showed Himself to be the Risen Lord should have performed 
the miracles we find in the Evangelists. The evidence of St. Paul 
to the continuance of miracles in the Christian Church of his day 
is very important He was not only aware of miracles performed 
by others, he knew that he had performed, and continued to per- 
form, miracles himself. He refers to these miracles of his own, 
as known to all his readers, appealing to what they had seen; 
for instance, he says to the Corinthians (2 Cor. xii. verse 12) that 
'the signs of an apostle were wrought among you, in all patience, 
by signs and wonders, and mighty works.' If his readers at Corinth 
had not seen these miracles, it is incredible that he would have 
written to them and reminded them' of their experience. It fol- 
lows that if the humble apostle, the slave of Christ, as he called 
himself, could perform miracles by the Power of the Risen Christ, 
how much more his wonderful and mighty Master. 



CHAPTER XXII 

The Gospels (Jesus at Nazareth — At Cana — At Capernaum — 
At Jerusalem — With Nicodemus — At Sychar — A Woman of 
Samaria). 

At the time with which this chapter deals, Jesus had not left 
His home at Nazareth. It was nine miles thence to Cana, where He 
visited the Marriage Feast, with His mother and His disciples. The 
mother of Jesus said to her Son that the wine was finished. These 
words were the words of one who had reason to know that her 
Son was no ordinary man. That she expected something is plain, 
for though her Son's answer gave no encouragement to interference 
on her part, she turned aside to the servants and said, 'What- 
soever he saith unto you do it' (St. John ii. verse s). There stood 
near six waterpots of stone — huge ones, such as are used all over 
the Holy Land, in which the water remains fresh and cool. Jesus 
commanded the servants to fill these water- jars with water. This 
was done. Then our Lord commanded them, 'Draw out now, and 
bear unto the governor of the feast' (verse 8). And again they 
obeyed. The governor drank of the wine and knew not whence 
it came. He only knew that it was better wine than he had 
drunk before. Everybody saw for themselves what had happened. 
Thus was His glory manifested, and His disciples believed on Him. 

In this miracle we see the same power that changes the water of 
the skies into wine, through the gradual processes that make vine- 
sap and grape- juice in their order, changing water into wine with- 
out the intervening processes. Both works are wonderful; both 
are God's works, but the latter we call miraculous, because it is 
above our common experience. 'My Father worketh hitherto 
('even until now,' R.V.), and I work' (St. John v. verse 17). 

What a contrast it was for our Lord to mingle here with a 
pleasure-seeking and joyous marriage crowd, after His sad days 
of utter loneliness and privation in the desert. It matters not what 
it is that comes to our Lord's experience during His life on earth, 
each opportunity is turned to the very best account; no chance is 
ever lost of doing His Father's will and of showing forth His 
honour and glory, be it among the happy or among the sad. It 
must be remembered that our Lord was no ascetic, and His Chris- 
tianity was not and is not asceticism. 

328 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 329 

St. John ii. verse 11: This beginning of miracles did Jesus in 
Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples 
believed on him.' The word 'miracles' here is a mistranslation for 
'signs' (R.V.), St. John's pregnant word for miracles. This sign 
revealed the truth of God's presence in Christ, and God's working 
through Christ in outward nature. The satisfaction of bodily 
wants by God is the first lesson, which is to carry on the readers 
of the story to seek in Him the satisfaction of spiritual wants. St. 
John describes the effect of the sign or miracle to be twofold : first 
a manifestation of Christ's glory, and next a foundation of faith 
in His disciples. He did not refuse to share the rich Pharisee's 
banquet or the poor fisherman's bread ; the house of mourning knew 
Him, as also the house of joy; for example, this marriage feast. 
He showed that neither wealth nor poverty are necessary condi- 
tions of the citizenship of that Kingdom of God, but the state of 
the heart, the righteousness, joy, and peace which are within. 

After this our Lord went to Capernaum with His mother, His 
brethren, and His disciples ; but the fact that He stayed not many 
days is probably inserted by St. John to show that He had not yet 
taken up His residence there. 

From Capernaum' He went to Jerusalem for the Passover with 
some of His disciples. St. John ii. verses 14-16: 'And he found 
in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the 
changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of 
small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and 
the oxen ; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the 
tables; and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things 
hence ; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.' This 
expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the outer court of the 
Temple was a deliberate act, intended as a public declaration that 
the young Prophet had a mission to Israel, and we see that the 
declaration was suitably made at the centre of national worship. 
By this everybody would know that Jesus claimed to be a religious 
reformer like the old Prophets. 

Seeing in Christ's action a claim to exercise high prophetic 
functions, the Jews asked for some evidence as to His right to do 
those things which belong to a great Prophet's work. They asked 
for a sign or token to support His claim. By way of satisfying 
their demand for a sign. He uses a comparison which compares 
the Temple with Himself. St. John ii. verse 19: 'Jesus answered 
and said unto them. Destroy this temple, and in three days I will 
raise it up.' 

The Jews, misunderstanding the meaning of this, objected. Full 



330 'ALL HAIL' 

well they knew that their Temple had already taken forty and six 
years to build. How, then, could any one raise it up in three days? 
But He was not speaking of a temple built by the hand of man, 
but of His own body. St. John, when he wrote, perceived that his 
Master had, when He spoke, foreseen His Death and His Resur- 
rection within three days, which was at the time hidden from' His 
disciples. St. John ii. verse 22 : 'When therefore he was risen 
from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto 
them; and they believed the scriptures, and the word which Jesus 
had said.' His stay at Jerusalem was not without effect, for we 
read in St. John's account, 'many believed in his name when they 
saw the miracles which he did' (ii verse 23). 

In St. John iii. we read, 'There was a man of the Pharisees, 
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.' He was a member of the 
learned religious council of the nation called the Sanhedrin. All 
the council were experts on points of Jewish law, and governed the 
Jewish people under the Roman Empire. St. John iii. verse 2 : 
'The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi 
[Teacher], we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no 
man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.' 

We wonder while reading this, why Nicodemus chose the night 
to visit Jesus. Surely the days were fully occupied for the all- 
helping Friend of man, and it was hardly fair to break in upon the 
privacy and quiet of His night. Nicodemus must have had a very 
special reason. The reason was probably fear of adverse criticism. 
The Jews were proud; they thought they knew as much as was 
necessary. Nicodemus would have been harshly judged and 
severely condemned, had it been known that he was asking advice 
from the Prophet of Nazareth. But as against all this, Nicodemus 
acted on the impulse of his heart which had been touched. An ir- 
resistible attraction had taken possession of him towards this 
marvellous Teacher. Under the star-lit canopy of heaven, per- 
haps on the flat roof of the house that held Jesus, we can imagine 
Nicodemus speaking to the Master, drinking in the words of wis- 
dom coming from the Divine lips. Nicodemus was a man of 
position ; looked on as one in authority; a ruler of men. As 
Jesus spoke to him, high possibilities of a life opened out before 
him ; this life, which all of us may live by the grace of God. Ought 
not all of us in the silence of the night to come apart from the 
world to our Lord and Master, and hold converse in prayer with 
Him? 

Jesus said to him: 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man 
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God' (St. John iii. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 331 

verse 3). This word Verily — that is, 'truly' — in the New Testa- 
ment reminds us rather of the Old Testament expression : Thus 
saith the Lord.' Both are pronounced with full authority and as- 
surance in their respective places. Jesus teaches us to review our 
everyday life; and once we look below the surface, according to 
His instructions, He gives us the right direction, Nicodemus 
asked and required an explanation. Naturally we are but once born 
into this world. To our great consolation, our inner man is fash- 
ioned in such a way that we are able to make many new starts. 
When we find ourselves on the wrong road, we are happily able 
to pull up, and turn our heads in the opposite direction ; this is the 
•great advantage that our inner man has over our outer. Our 
body has a limited being. Free will belongs to out inner man alone, 
in order more fully to explain what the 'New Birth' means, 
we will take a homely illustration; for nothing- is too simple, so 
long as we learn from it. It is a true story. A lady had a class, 
and there gathered at her house different grades of scholars, 
among them being a princess and a servant. All in common were 
taught about our Lord Jesus Christ, teaching which received in 
faith unites all in Him'. The little maid-of-all-work was a flighty 
little person; she had not given satisfaction in her work, she was 
continually being reprimanded. One day, after all the others had 
left, she begged to be allowed to say something to the lady at the 
head of the class. Say on, my child ; I am listening,' Hesitatingly 
did the girl begin : ' 'I think that I have now found the Saviour, 
and -that I now understand what you meant when you told us that 
He is not far removed from us, and is not up in the clouds, and 
just for lis to hear about when we go to church. I think I now 
feel that He cares, and that He helps us in our everyday life,' A 
smile of satisfaction lighted up the countenance of the lady. T am 
content, my child; and let us thank God for this blessing. But; 
before praying together, I want to know what makes you feel so 
sure of our Blessed Saviour having entered into your heart and 
soul.' 'Well,' said the little maid, 'formerly I only used to brush 
and sweep around the mats and rugs and carpets. Now I lift them 
all up, and see that all is clean under them.' This little girl found 
our Lord as surely as that member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus 
and found in Him a light to lighten her life, as do all who seek Him 
sincerely. One of us is called upon to dust a floor ; another occupies 
herself in a higher region of work. No matter; each one has work 
to do, and the essential part about any work is, that it has to be 
done with all one's heart and with all one's might. It is this seeing 
that all is clean underneath which makes all the difference. This is 



2,Z2 'ALL HAIL' 

thoroughness, and honesty when we perform what we promise. To 
take Christ for our example, and to rule our hearts, does all this 
for us. Jesus told Nicodemus that an inward spiritual birth must 
accompany as a necessary condition entrance by baptism into His 
kingdom. The rite and the new birth are both necessary: 'Except 
a man be bom of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
kingdom of God' (St. John iii. 5-9). 'That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel 
not that I said unto thee. Ye must be born again.' As none can 
track the wind's course, so none can track the Spirit's : 'The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every 
one that is born of the Suirit' The Spirit of God is ever ready 
to come to us, mysteriously as the wind comes, or as the still 
small voice of the Lord which speaks to the soul the minute we 
are ready to listen to it. 

The image of the wind was probably suggested by some sudden 
gust sweeping down the street. Then came deeper thoughts on His 
Own Person and work: 'And no man hath ascended up to heaven, 
but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which 
is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
ness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up : that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life (R.V., 
'may in him have eternal life'). For God so loved the world that 
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life' (St. John iii. 13-17). 

Nicodemus had not yet the courage of his opinions; had he 
spoken out for Christ, he might have been expelled from' the 
Sanhedrin. Later we read in St. John vii. that the chief priests 
and Pharisees had sent to arrest our Lord, and that when the of- 
ficers returned empty-handed, and were asked, 'Why have ye not 
brought him?' and answered, 'Never man spake like this man," 
they drew on themselves the Pharisees' rebuke. Nicodemus, who 
was standing by, was moved to say a word against the injustice of 
condemning Jesus without hearing Him, and said: 'Doth our law 
judge any man, before it hear him; and know what he doeth?' 
(verse 51). He was at once answered by the Pharisees, 'Art thou 
also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no 
prophet' {i.e., the Messiah comes not thence). After the Crucir 
fixion, Nicodemus assisted Joseph of Arimathaea in embalming and 
burying the body of Christ. St. John xix. 39, 40: 'And there came 
also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and 
brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 333 

weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen 
clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury,' 

Soon after this conversation with Nicodemus, to whom its record 
is clearly due, our Lord set out for Galilee, through Samaria. The 
fourth chapter of St. John is most fascinating. If the readers 
happen to be girls or women, what must their feelings be when 
they enter into the full significance of this wonderful story? To 
see Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman at Sychar (it was held 
unbecoming for any man of light and learning so much as to speak 
with a woman) is to gaze on a picture which brings before us the 
vastness of the change His religion has made in the world. What 
a fortunate being she was thus to meet Jesus. Thoughts can never 
soar high enough, nor words suffice, to describe adequately all that 
happened. We see 'the woman coming to the ancient well and 
drawing water for her househlod. What an unexpected largess of 
good things was to come her way! 

Jacob's Well, near the tomb of Jacob and Joseph, called so up 
to this present day, is one of the loveliest spots on earth. A 
picturesque ruin lies scattered about the well. Pink roses in pro- 
fusion bloom in fresh and airy beauty, shedding fragrance around, 
as you wander up and down and gaze, and gaze, and never exhaust 
your sense of admiration. The country further afield which meets 
the eye is gorgeous. The name of the plain to-day is El Mukhna. 
Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, guardians of the plain, dominate the 
scene. We can imagine the woman of Samaria pointing her finger 
towards the latter's imposing rock-girt heights. In this neighbour- 
hood rested the Ark, when rescued by the Levites from the Philis- 
tines. Eastern colouring lends enchantment to the whole scene, 
and we give ourselves up to the enraptured consciousness of the 
living fact that all we read of in our Bible is true for ever; for 
the old landmarks remain, speaking eloquently of all that has 
taken place. 

The sky was brilliant with sunset splendours. Jesus had travelled 
all day and was resting His weary limbs. Our Evangelist, indeed, 
says that Jesus had left Judaea and departed again into Galilee, and 
He must needs go through Samaria' (St. John iv. verse 4). Is it 
not just as if our Blessed Lord had known that there was an 
ardent soul waiting for the magnetic touch of His inspired teach- 
ing ; waiting for that spark to fall which would kindle into a flame 
of righteousness the soul of the hardened sinner, making her ever 
after a light to guide others; an influence for spreading the good 
news, the Gospel among men? 

St. John iv. verse 5, says: 'Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, 



334- 'ALL HAIL' 

which is- called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob 
gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus there- 
fore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it 
was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to 
draw water : Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. For His 
disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.' 

Jesus led the simplest life. This ought to set some of us think- 
ing. We ought to try to curb our desires; to reduce our wants; 
to simplify our mode of living, according to the pattern laid down 
for us by our Saviour. 

The woman of Samaria was taken by surprise : she could not 
understand why Jesus should see fit to ask her to give Him' drink. 
She said: 'How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, 
which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings 
with the Samaritans' (St. John iv. verse 9). 

The Samaritans were originally Assyrian colonists. After Sar- 
gon had taken Samaria, he carried away the Ten Tribes to Assyria. 
Men were brought from Babylon as colonists to take their place, 
and established in the cities of Samaria. At a later date large num- 
bers of Assyrian colonists were added. (Ezra iv. verses i-io). 
These colonists were first called Samaritans in 2 Kings xvii. verse 
20. They brought with them their national gods, and troubles 
having come upon them, as it was supposed owing to the vengeance 
of the gods of the land, one of the captive Jewish priests was sent 
to teach them 'how they should fear the Lord' (2 Kings xvii. verse 
28). As a consequence they adopted the Jewish ritual and wor- 
shipped Jehovah, but did not give up their graven images. After 
the Captivity, the exclusiveness of the Jews stirred up a mutual 
enmity which found expression on every opportunity in open 
hostility, in which the Samaritans generally took the lead. Some- 
times Galileans passed through Samaria, which was the shortest 
way for them to Jerusalem, and on one occasion the Samaritans 
killed some Galileans who were passing through, and the conflict 
which arose was referred to Rome for settlement. The feeling of 
the Jews towards the Samaritans in our Lord's time was shown by 
their use of the word Samaritan, as a term of contemptuous re- 
proach. For instance, in St. John viii. verse 48, we read, 'Say we 
not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hath a devil?' This was 
the reproach addressed to our Lord by his Jewish adversaries. 

Here once more we have a lesson brought home to us by Christ. 
We see how far He is above party strife. For Him no barriers 
exist. He asked not then, nor does He ask now, are we Jews, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 335 

Samaritans, Gentiles, or Catholics Roman or Anglican, Eastern 
Church or Western Church, Congregationalists or Methodists, or 
any of the other various denominations. St. Paul expresses well 
the universal scope of the Church that is directed by the mind of 
Christ: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor 
free, there is neither male nor female : for ye are all one in Christ 
Jesus' (Galatians iii. verse 28). 'Grace be with all them that love 
our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity' (Ephesians vi. verse 24). 

Christ revealed one God, one holy, divine love, boundless, free 
from petty differences, one loA^e which reaches to every soul^ and 
when received is salvation. If we could all see our differences 
aright by turning to our one centre of unity, remembering that 
unity in Christ means unity in diversity, we all would be one as 
in Christ's prayer. Do not let us be hasty in judging a brother or 
a sister, lest we be judged ourselves ; do not let us hurt them with 
cruel and useless criticisms. How do we know, or how can we 
tell, that our particular creed is better than — nay! possibly as good 
for them as their own? It is that in which Christians agree, not 
that in which they differ, that counts. It is the faithful following of 
Christ, the union with God through Him. It is obedience; it is 
humility that counts. All these we have to aim at. All these are 
summed up by the one word, Christian. Different people have dif- 
ferent expressions for, and different ways, and different means of 
arriving at, salvation. All of us have one common goal. It is not 
for us to lay down a law for others. Let us look to our own re- 
sponsibilities, and do our duty by God and by man. The sect or 
denomination (both to be taken in the broad sense of the word) 
with which we identify ourselves, or to which we belong, accord- 
ing to what we profess, is a matter of accident. This should not 
surprise us. Take a child. Its parents or guardians bring it up. 
When quite young the child is taught according to the faith pro- 
fessed by those in authority over it. While young we are given no 
choice at all. On account of being without experience, everything 
is arranged for us. Being inexperienced, this important matter, 
like others, is taken out of our hands. You can see what I mean. 
In after-life it is the exception rather than the rule to throw over 
the faith of our childhood. For the sake of order in society, just 
as we have a name, an address, and belong to a country and a 
nation, and have a given round of occupation and interest, so it is 
customary for us to identify ourselves with and profess, a cer- 
tain faith. This is all clear. Let us be humble. Let us certainly 
carry out, or at least try to, every principle we have come to look 



336 'ALL HAIL' 

upon as right during our education. Let us try to live our own 
lives aright ; there is enough for us to do, and we have certainly no 
time to look into other people's business. 

And now we return from this digression to the woman of Sa- 
maria. . The answer she received from Jesus when she addressed 
Him is found in St. John iv. verse lo: 'If thou knewest the gift 
of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living 
water. The woman saith unto him. Sir, thou hast nothing to draw 
with, and the well is deep : from whence then hast thou that living 
water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the 
well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this 
water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that 
I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give 
him shall be in him' a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life. The woman saith unto him. Sir, give me this water, that I 
thirst not, neither come hither to draw.' 

Once more we see that it is one thing to ask and another thing 
to receive. Wie can only receive at Christ's hands, after having 
given up the wrong that is in us. Jesus saw into the heart of this 
woman, that her mind was working towards the desire for a better 
life. She had led a careless, sinful existence, and Jesus spoke to 
her about it. She answered Him, 'Sir, I perceive that thou art a 
prophet' (verse 19). Jesus explained that neither on Mount 
Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, is the one and only place where 
God is to be worshipped. 'But the hour cometh, and now is, 
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him' (verse 23). 
This profound teaching goes on to say: 'God is a spirit (R.M., 
'God is Spirit') : and they that worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth' (verse 24). 

This we all remember reading about in the very first chapter 
of this book. The woman of Samaria had been taught, and knew 
well, the Messianic expectation. She said to Jesus: 'I know that 
Messias cometh, which is called Christ : when he is come, he will 
tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am 
he' (verses 25, 26). It is not difficult for us to believe that our 
Saviour left a lasting impression for good on this woman's heart. 
St. John iv. verse 2T. 'And upon this came his disciples, and 
marvelled that he talked with the woman (R.V., a woman) : yet no 
man said, What seekest thou? or. Why talkest thou with her? 
The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE ZZ7 

and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things 
that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Then they went out of the 
city, and came unto him. In the mean while his disciples prayed 
him. saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to 
eat that ye know not of.' This surprised the disciples; they were 
only thinking of meat which they had fetched from the village. 
They immediately thought that Christ had been supplied with food 
by others. Jesus said, 'My meat is to do the will of him that sent 
me, and to finish his work' (verse 34), which means that the spirit- 
ual food of saving the Samaritan woman so fully satisfied our Lord 
that he no longer needed bodily food. 

'Say not ye,' our Lord went on, 'there are yet four months, and 
then Cometh harvest? (that is, it was now December, and the har- 
vest would be in April) behold I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, 
and look on the fields ; for they are white already to harvest.' This 
means that the harvest of the Samaritan fields was months distant; 
but that the harvest of Samaritan souls was already ripe for the 
reaper. 

We hear that many of the Samaritans believed on Him, and that 
they asked Him to tarry among them. He complied with their re- 
quest, and remained with them for two days. Thus it was that 
our Lord deemed it best to carry on His work; for Jesus Him- 
self testified that 'a prophet hath no honour in his own country' 
(verse 44). Here, amongst strangers, H'e was gaining ground. St. 
John's Gospel tells us that from Samaria the Lord returned once 
more to Cana in Galilee. His teaching was making converts 
among the Samaritans, but mistrust and suspicion and antipathy 
were also on the increase among the Jews, who wanted an earthly 
leader against the Romans, not a spiritual Messiah. 

At Cana there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at 
Capernaum ; 'when he heard that Jesus was come out of Judasa into 
Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he w^ould come 
down, and heal his son : for he was at the point of death' (verse 
47). Somewhat reproachfully, our Lord alluded to the signs and 
wonders required, without which people would not believe. The 
nobleman was so full of his own trouble that he could think only 
of his son at the point of death, and that before him stood the 
Wonderful Healer who could save his child. The nobleman im- 
plored Christ to come down before death stepped in. 

'Jesus saith unto him. Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man 
believed the wbrd that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his 
way' (verse 50). 

We see that there was not one moment's doubt in the mind of 



338 ' ALL HAIL 

the nobleman ; that absolute faith enabled him to take Christ's word 
as true. 

'And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told 
him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour 
v/hen he began to amend. And they said unto him. Yesterday at 
the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it 
was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him. Thy son 
liveth: and himself believed, and his whole house' (verses 51-53)- 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Gospels (Jesus and the Problem of the Sabbath Day — 
The Preaching at Nazareth — At Jerusalem — The Return 
to Galilee — Miracles of Healing at Capernaum — The Call 
OF St. Matthew). 

One of the Evangelists, St. Luke, tells us, 'there went virtue out 
of him' and healed them all.' When we allow ourselves time to dwell 
on this expression, it comes home to us what a beautiful one it is. 
Virtue here means healing power: the divine power resident in 
Christ went out of Him to all who had need. Viewed in the deep- 
est sense, Christ's Goodness, His Love, His Mercy, are all still flow- 
ing from' Him into us, if we are ready to receive them, for our 
lasting good. We see how He was able to deal with all kinds of 
disease, and indeed He never fails for a moment in removing any 
ailment, physical, moral, or spiritual. He heals and blesses and 
saves now as then unfailingly. He never attempted a miracle, and 
was forced to desist. Even when about to raise the dead, He was 
able to thank God beforehand for the mighty work He knew He 
was about to do. 

Talking of Christ's work, we are brought face to face with the 
fact that Christ did not restrict Himself to six days of the week. 
We find Him at work healing and curing all who came to Him' in 
the right spirit, even when it was on the Sabbath Day. The Gos- 
pels record this fact unmistakably. This is therefore specially in- 
tended for our understanding and guidance in life. In the Bible 
the Sabbath is the seventh day, and means the day of rest. It was 
probably known to the Babylonians, and it is possible that the 
Hebrew and Babylonian institutions came from a common source. 
Be that as it may, the Hebrew institution was free from the super- 
stition associated with the Babylonian observance. The Sabbath 
was the seventh day of the week, so would fall on the day which 
is our Saturday. In all codes of the Pentateuch, the Sabbath is 
ordained, and its object is to provide a day of rest from field labour 
for an agricultural community distinctly for a humanitarian pur- 
pose. Exodus xxiii. verse 12: 'Six days thou shalt do thy work, 
and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine asi 

339 



340 ' ALL HAIL ' 

may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be 
refreshed.' In Exodus xx. verse 8, the command is to keep the 
Sabbath holy. 'It is the Sabbath unto Jehovah' ; that is, to be ob- 
served in honour of Jehovah ; and the cessation of work was to 
extend not only to the Israelites, not only to the strangers settled 
in the land, but also to the domestic animals. In Deuteronomy v. 
verse 14, the philanthropic purpose is insisted upon. 

At first all worked well, the people enjoyed the rest offered them 
on the Sabbath, according to what had been taught them. But as 
time went on the restrictions and penalties became more severe. 
Quite natural and most innocent things came to be considered 
wrong, and by the time that Christ's ministry began, the Jewish 
legalists had made the Sabbath a caricature of what it was meant 
to be. The Sabbath had come to be a heavy burden on the people, 
and no more a refreshment. It was against the narrow and heart- 
less literalism of such a conception our Saviour directed His wise 
teaching. 

After our Lord's ministry on earth, in the first period of the Chris- 
tian Church, the Judaizing Christians kept the Sabbath severely, 
while St. Paul, as the Apostle to the Gentiles, boldly spoke out for 
Christian Liberty and condemned the rigid keeping of the seventh 
day as though it were an essential of Christianity. The early records 
of the Christian Church show that the Lord's Day was revered 
and considered holy. It was well known as the Lord's Day when 
St. John wrote the Book of the Revelation (chapter i. verse 10) : 
T was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.' Up to the fifth century 
there was considered to be no connection between the Sabbath and 
the Lord's Day. Christians assembled on the first day of the week, 
in memory of the Lord's Resurrection on that day, whence the day 
derived its name. 

So much by way of explanation of the Jewish Sabbath and the 
Christian Sunday. Now we come to the passages in our four 
Evangelists concerning our Lord's dealings with, and the Pharisees' 
conception of, the Sabbath. We will do this without observing the 
sequence of other events in our Lord's life. The attitude of our 
Lord towards the Sabbath was that of an authoritative Reformer. 
He used what was good in the institution, while condemning the 
evil which had been engrafted upon it. He joined in the worship 
and the teaching in the synagogue. He taught that 'the sabbath 
was made for man and not man for the sabbath.' (St. Mark ii. verse 
27), But against the exaggerated prohibitions of the Jewish legalists 
of anything in the nature of labour, He set His face like a flint. 

St. Matthew xii. verses 1-3 : 'At that time Jesus went on the sab- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 34i 

bath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and 
began to phick the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees 
saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is 
not lawful to do upon the sabbath day. But he said unto them, 
Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and 
they that were with him?' 

We see the extravagant casuistry of the Pharisees. What can 
the harm be of plucking off a few ears of corn ? The Pharisees' posi- 
tion was that plucking the ears of corn was practically reaping, and 
rubbing the ears of corn was practically threshing, and both ac- 
cordingly were breaches of the law against labour. Jesus answered 
that David, without offence, 'entered into the house of God, and did 
eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for 
them which were with him, but only for the priests' (verse 4). 

God did not condemn David for this act. Jesus goes on to ex- 
plain that we are to avoid taking what we read in a restricted literal 
sense ; He ends up by saying : 'For the Son of man is Lord even of 
the sabbath day' (verse 8). 

We go on to another incident in our Lord's life. We see Him 
about to heal a man that had his hand withered. Immediately those 
VN^ho were ready to find fault with Him attacked Him, asking: Ts it 
lawful to heal on the sabbath days?' (verse 10). Among the multi- 
tude of beautiful lessons taught and comforting words spoken by 
our Saviour, the words spoken and the lesson taught on this oc- 
casion are not, we think, least beautiful. Gentle pity overflowed 
from the large and tender heart of our Blessed Lord. Those 
gracious words sanctioned and confirmed the duty which the Jews 
recognised of treating animals with kindness and consideration 
even on the Sabbath day. Then He said to those standing around 
Him : 'What man shall there be among you, that shall have one 
sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay 
hold on it and lift it out? How much then is a man better than 
a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days' 
(verses 11, 12). 

Christ's teaching is very simple and, at the same time, profound. 
Christ's teaching as to the Sabbath greatly offended the Jews. It 
was the head and front of His offences against their arid legalism. 
We read that 'he knew their thoughts' (Luke vi. verse 8), and met 
them by healing the man. Thereupon 'they were filled with mad- 
ness; and communed one with another what they might do to 
Jesus' (Luke vi. verse 11). 

Another Sabbath-day teaching centres round the following inci- 
dent, described in Luke xiv. verse i : 'And it came to pass, as he 



342 'ALL HAIL' 

went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees, to eat bread on 
the sabbath day, that they watched him.' 

All the Jews, even those Pharisee extremists, were in the habit of 
eating and drinking, and feasting on the sabbath. Jesus accepted 
one of the chief Pharisees' invitation. This was because it gave 
him an opportunity of mixing with people who required to be 
reached by personal intercourse, and thus to have their eyes opened 
to their own state and their own needs. St. Luke goes on to say : 
'And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the 
dropsy.' 

It was Jesus this time who addressed the lawyers and the Phari- 
sees in order to draw out from them their opinion. The question He 
put was this: 'Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?' We find 
that this question put by Jesus worked a complete change in the at- 
titude and behaviour of the assembled guests. They were at a loss 
for an answer. The Gospel says that 'they held their peace.' St. 
Luke xiv. verses 4-6: 'And he took him, and healed him, and let 
him' go ; and answered them, saying. Which of you shall have an 
ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out 
on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these 
things.' 

Here is a picture for us to look at. We see Christ sitting 
amongst the motley crowd ; and a stout man standing between the 
two pillars, who was perhaps the poor afflicted man cured by Christ, 
only too glad to have his trying malady removed, regardless of 
what day of the week it might be. On the other side there is a 
man pointing his finger. Perhaps this is one of the haughty ones 
who finds fault with the practice of Sabbath healing, and takes 
upon himself to condemn the beneficent work of Jesus, when He 
restored to health the sick and suffering. We may still learn 
spiritual lessons from Christ's blessed teaching of the lawfulness 
of Sabbath-day healing. 

Jesus had been now for some time making his headquarters at 
Capernaum, from which he had been visiting the country parts, 
preaching the Gospel, teaching in all the synagogues, and healing 
the sick. A very striking event in His ministry has now to be 
recorded. He came to his own town, Nazareth, which He had 
abandoned for the more busy centre of Capernaum', and now re- 
visited for the first time. It was only a few months since He had 
left Nazareth ; but how much had occurred in that time. -. In Galilee, 
as well as at Jerusalem, He had already made Himself known. On 
the Sabbath He went into the synagogue at Nazareth. He went 
into the synagogue, as His custom had been, to join in the common 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 343 

worship. Whether Jesus was invited by the ruler of the synagogue 
to conduct the whole service, as was usual, or whether He was only 
invited to read the second lesson and preach, we are not told. 
They had two lessons in these services, one from' the Law and 
another from the Prophets. Probably, if not already invited, Jesus 
stood up as a sign that He wished to read the second lesson. The 
Roll of the Prophets was given to Him. The Lessons were read 
in Hebrew and translated by an interpreter into Aramaic. 

St. Luke iv. verse 16: '. . . . as his custom was, he went into 
the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And 
there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And 
when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was 
written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to 
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.' 

After He had read the lesson, Jesus rolled up the book, gave it 
back to the minister (R.V., attendant) and sat down. When the 
people in the synagogue saw Him sit down, they knew that He was 
going to preach. They had, no doubt, heard of His mighty works 
at Cana and Capernaum, for we read, 'the eyes of all them that 
v;ere in the synagogue were fastened on him.' In a Jewish syna- 
gogue, the preacher sat down to deliver his sermon. 

St. Luke iv. verses 21, 22 : 'And he began to say unto them, 
This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare him 
witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out 
of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?' The ser- 
mon was in Aramaic. 

We can see that His townsfolk were jealous of Him. What right 
had Jesus, the carpenter's son, to identify himself with the Right- 
eous Servant in the lesson read from Isaiah? Jesus heard their 
criticisms, and changed the direction of His address, pointing out 
that both Elijah and Elisha had left the unbelieving Israelites and 
brought God's blessing to Gentiles, like the widow of Zarephath and 
Naaman the Syrian. The result was immediate : St. Luke iv. 
verses 28-30: 'And all they in the synagogue, when they heard 
these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him 
out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon 
their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But 
he passing through the midst of them, went his way.' 

After being cast out of Nazareth, Jesus returned to Capernaum, 
which now became more distinctively His home. At that lakeside 



344 ' ALL HAIL ' 

town He would, on the Sabbath, preach in the synagogue which the 
centurion had built — 'For he loveth our nation, and he hath built 
us a synagogue' (St, Luke vii. verse 5) — and of which the chief 
ruler was Jairus. 

The next move with which we are acquainted is the visit to 
Jerusalem for the feast generally called the 'Unknown feast,' called 
by St, John simply 'a feast of the Jews.' 

In the valley of the brook Kidron, which emerges from under the 
rock at the base of the Temple, and into which brook all the blood 
of the sacrificed animals was wont to run, there was a sheep-market 
(R,V., gate). This was one of the twelve gateways of the great 
wall which encircled Jerusalem. Through this particular gate re- 
ferred to all the animals for the sacrifices were driven oh their 
way to the Temple. Another historical feature of the surroundings 
was a pool of water known to us as the Pool of Bethesda. It was 
fed by a subterranean and intermittent spring. In olden days, to 
guard against a fierce sun, the pool was covered over. Under the 
awning, the sick and the poor, the halt and the maimed, used to 
lie and sit about. This was their retreat, and might be regarded 
almost as their hospital. But no doctor was there who could treat 
them. What they came for and believed in was the healing property 
of the water. To get into it, they thought was to be cured. The 
bubbling of the water was caused, according to the words of the 
Gospel, in this way :'.... an angel went down at a certain 
season into the pool, and troubled the water : whosoever then first 
after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of 
whatsoever disease he had' (St. John v. verse 4). 

One memorable day Jesus was walking amongst the sufferers. 
His kind eyes looked round, and on this particular occasion fixed 
their gaze on one man from' among the many. The Gospel says 
(verse 5) : 'And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity 
thirty and eight years.' What a lifetime of helplessness these words 
convey. Words Jesus addressed to him later imply that in former 
days he had not been a man of good life. The Scripture tells us 
that Jesus said to him: 'Wilt thou be made whole?' (verse 6). 
Jesus selected the man who most needed healing, and also selected 
the man who most needed reformation. Here was a surprise. 
Here was a man who could not believe his own ears. Hopelessly he 
answered : 'Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put 
me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down 
before me' (verse 7). This poor cripple could not move; his legs 
would not support him'. Unsuccessfully he had shuffled along as 
best he could, but he was always too slow and always arrived too 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 345 

late. Our Lord thereupon spoke the words of power: 'Rise, take 
up thy bed, and walk' (verse 8). This was said to the man who 
had not been able to move for thirty-eight years. Then we read 
(verse g) : 'And immediately the man was made whole, and took 
up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.' 

Before proceeding, just let us put in one word about the bed, 
which the man was ordered to carry at the command of Christ. 
We must not think of a bed with a framework of wood or iron, 
which would be too cumbersome to be taken up and walked away 
with. In the East it was the custom to lie on a thin m.attress, or 
even a mat, and to cover yourself with your cloak ; the climate there 
is so dry, and often it is so hot, that the poorer people lie out and 
sleep under the canopy of heaven. It is therefore quite easy to 
pick up a few wraps and carry them away, and it is quite easy 
for us to understand this part of the story. But where the marvel 
comes in is the actual cure of this hopelessly paralysed man. 

After Jesus had spoken His words of power to the paralytic. He 
im.mediately took Himself away from among the crowd. He wished 
for no demonstration. He worked quietly and unassumingly, taking 
no credit to Himself, but sa5dng that it was due to His Heavenly 
Father that He wrought His mighty works. What a number of 
lessons we learn from Christ. There is not one single position in 
life which is outside the teaching and example of our Blessed Lord. 
He has had experience of all our conditions, and can supply all our 
needs. Through Him we can be blessed in every enterprise of 
ours. We have only to mould our actions according to His pattern. 

When the Jews saw the cured man walking, and carrying away 
his bed, they grumbled, because this carrying of the bed was a 
breach of the Sabbath day. They accused the man. Gratitude 
overflowed his heart, now strong and well. Little did he care what 
the Jews were concerning themselves about. He brushed them 
aside, and said : 'He that made me whole, the same said unto me, 
Take up thy bed and walk. Then asked they him, What man is 
that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed and walk? And he 
that was healed wist not who it was : for Jesus had conveyed him- 
self away, a multitude being in that place.' 

The cured man met in the Temple his benefactor, who addressed 
the following warning to him: 'Behold, thou art made whole: sin 
no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee' (verse 14). Thus we 
see this man cured at once of sickness and of sin by the power of 
God dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth. 

When the Jews knew that it was Jesus who had healed the 
paralytic, they were infuriated. 'Therefore the Jews sought the more 



346 'ALL HAIL' 

to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said 
also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God' (St. 
John V. verse i8). 

And now we can safely draw our own conclusions from Christ's 
teaching regarding the Sabbath. We have to read Holy Scripture 
for our enlightenment and guidance through life, and to be a joy 
to us in all. The Old Testament teaching is widened and enlarged 
on in the New Testament. Once and for all, we find settled by 
the example of Christ the vexed question of how rightly to spend 
the Christian Sunday, which has taken the place of the Jewish 
Sabbath. How often do we in these latter days hear a discussion as 
to what is considered wrong and what is considered right to do 
on this special day. 

The Jews rightly concluded that Christ identified Himself with 
God: 'Verily, verily, I say unto 3^ou, The Son can do nothing of 
himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever 
he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise' (verse 19). The Jews 
deliberately accused Christ of blasphemy, and blasphemy was the 
greatest offence of all. Henceforth this charge was never allowed 
to be lost sight of. It was on this charge that the final accusation 
was made, and it was on this that Christ was really condemned 
to death at the last. 

Besides this revolutionary Sabbath teaching, our Lord uttered 
many sayings which offended the Jews. 

The Fifth Chapter of St. John is all-sufficient to convince any- 
body, at least any one who comes in the simple spirit of a child, 
and is ready to receive the good news, of the absolute certainty of 
Christ's oneness with God. We need this teaching as much as ever 
to-day. Besides impressing us with His own authority, He calls 
to witness John the Baptist. Jesus says : 'There is another that 
beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he 
witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness 
unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man; but these 
things I say that ye might be saved' (St. John v. verse 32). 
This same chapter goes on to say, in verse 35, 'He was a burning 
and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in 
his light. But I have greater witness than that of John : for the 
works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works 
that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. And 
the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. 
Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And 
ye have not his word abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him 
ye believe not. Search (R.V., 'ye search') the scriptures; for in 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 347 

them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which 
testify of me. And ye will not come to me that ye might have life.' 

Jesus realised that no present good could be gained by his teach- 
ing to the stiff-necked and stubborn Jews. He decided to go back 
to Galilee, where His early ministry had been carried on. There 
He would soon draw again to Himself all His old friends and 
followers. 

The next important event we have to record took place after 
our Lord's return to Galilee. We cannot do better than read the 
story as it is told to us in St. Luke's Gospel, v., verses i-ii: 'And 
it came to pass that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the 
word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw two 
ships standing by the lake ; but the fishermen were gone out of 
them, and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of 
the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust 
out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people 
out of the ship. Now, when he had left speaking, he said unto 
Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a 
draught. And Simon, answering, said unto him, Master, we have 
toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy 
word I will let down the net. And when they had this done, they 
inclosed a great multitude of fishes : and their net brake. And they 
beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that 
they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both 
the ships, so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, 
he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying. Depart from me; for I am' a 
sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were 
with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken. And 
so was also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were 
partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from 
henceforth they shall catch men. And when they had brought 
their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.' 

These fisherman already knew Jesus ; but this was their first 
call to leave their homes and give up their business, to be with 
Him continually. From this time a visible Church was in existence, 
the edifice of which the foundation had been laid when the two 
disciples left John the Baptist and followed Jesus; the same 
Church to which we Christians all belong now by direct spiritual 
descent. 

In our Lord's time the synagogue at Capernaum was probably a 
sumptuous building, visited alike by rich and by poor. According 
to recent research and excavation, opinion inclines to think that 
experts can definitely decide upon the exact site where stood the 



348 ' ALL HAIL ' 

synagogue. To-day it is a ruin on the lake shore, where ground 
overgrown with brushwood and marshy ground alternate. In the 
year 1905, when I was visiting the small huts huddled together, 
which go by the name of Tol-huns, I came across excavators at 
work, who were bringing to light fragments and pieces of columns, 
and remains of architecture, which told of past splendours, even 
in the dilapidated condition in which they were. Kindly nature 
had thrown a mantle of green verdure over the crumbling stone 
and marble, forsaken for centuries, and had hidden from view the 
eloquent, although silent, records of bygone ages. The Lord's 
words were at once remembered. St. Matthew xi. verses 23-25 : 
'And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be 
brought down to hell : for if the mighty works which have been 
done in thee had been done in Sodom it would have remained 
until this day. But I say unto you. That it shall be more tolerable 
for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. At 
that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord 
of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from' the 
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' 

And here it was also that one pictured the magnificent synagogue 
in all its splendour, as it was in the time when our Lord preached 
to the assembled crowds, and when we read of that piercing cry 
which went up, uttered in despair by the poor distracted maniac. 
This creature burst upon the Saviour, and asked and implored 
that he too might be saved. Christ had a power of mysterious 
mastery over souls possessed by evil spirits. At first the poor 
devil-possessed sufferer thus addresses the Saviour (St. Luke iv. 
verses 34, 35) : 'Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou 
Jesus of Nazareth ? art thou come to destroy us ? I know thee who 
thou art; the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, 
Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had 
thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.' 

Then we can imagine the maniac restored to sanity looking up 
into that Divine face of perfect pity, marvellously expressive of 
sympathy and help, and offering grateful thanksgiving for his 
deliverance. 

From the synagogue Jesus went to Peter's house, where 'Simeon's 
wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her.- And 
he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and im- 
mediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them' (St. 
Mark i, verses 30, 31). 

There was something very wonderful about our blessed Lord's 
healing. He did not allow golden opportunities to be wasted. He 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 349 

restored to those who were ill and useless, health and activity. 
Thus the sick woman was able immediately to take up once more 
her accustomed place in her family circle, and make herself useful 
in home-life. 

St. Mark i. verse 32 onwards says : 'And at even, when the sun 
did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them 
that were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered 
together at the door. And he healed many that were sick of divers 
diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils 
to speak, because they knew him.' 

Can we not imagine how ready all the sick and sore and crippled 
people were to flock around this never-erring and ever-ready Curer? 
xA.re we not ourselves eager to drink in the healing waters of the 
soul-refreshing teaching of this Minister of God's Holy Word, who 
ever dwells on our Father's love, illustrating if thus by His own 
gentle handling of all afflicted creatures brought unto Him? The 
same chapter of St. Mark, verse 35, goes on to say: 'And in the 
morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and 
departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.' 'Solitary place' 
(R.V. 'desert place') properly means a waste of wild untilled 
ground outside the town. 

There was great excitement in Capernaum'. They were all eager 
to find this wonderful Prophet and Healer. Peter and others came 
to Him, and told Him, 'All men seek for thee. And he said unto 
them. Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there 
also : for therefore came I forth. And he preached in their syna- 
.gogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils' (St, Mark i. 
verses 37-39)- 

The next sufferer to appeal to the Great Healer was a leper. 
Leprosy is about the saddest of all the sad illnesses human flesh is 
heir to. It existed in the days of the Old Testament, and was 
the same disease cured by our Saviour, and still exists incurable 
to-day. At Jerusalem there is now a Leprosy Hospital. But in 
spite of this, numbers of poor lepers lie and crouch about certain 
streets, usually against a high wall by the roadside, begging of 
passers-by. Most of them are unable to move, some manage to 
crawl up to you, holding out diseased limbs, and showing pitiful 
faces, such as serve to send a shudder of horror through your 
whole body. Wliat lives they have to live! Shunned and loathed 
by everybody and unable to help themselves. Most of them carry 
a small tin can, in which they rattle a solitary coin to attract your 
attention, thus asking for alms. Walking up to the Garden of 
Gethsemane, kept at the present time by an Italian Brotherhood, 



350 'ALL HAIL' 

who reverently tend the garden, you see crowds of these poor 
maimed specimens of humanity, who raise a lamentable moan, and 
beseech you to give them something. How one's heart aches for 
them : one can think of but one thing that could benefit them. Oh, 
for the healing touch of Christ. How they must daily yearn for 
H'im' to come by that way and help them in their distress, as only 
He is able to do, for the best medical skill is still powerless in the 
face of this incurable disease. 

We turn to St. Mark i. verse 40, where the record says: 'And 
there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to 
him, and saying unto him. If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.' 
This poor creature full well knew that nothing was loathsome to 
our Saviour; that ever uppermost in Him was the will to help^ 
others. 

'And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and 
touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean' (verse 41). 
Is it not too lovely to think of this ? To dwell on the poor leper's 
faith and its great reward. To see Jesus showing such Divine 
compassion, and not shrinking from the touch of this most loath- 
some disease. The Hand of Sympathy and Love wrought the 
cure. The Son of God has but to say, T will.' That suffices. 

The story goes on to say how Christ asked the man not to spread 
abroad the news. But doubtless the man was too happy and 
jubilant; he could not possibly keep this marvellous cure to him- 
self. .He gave it out, and everybody flocked the more round the 
Person of our Lord. It would have been better if the leper had 
considered his great Benefactor's commands. The result of his 
disobedience was that Jesus was so thronged by the people that 
He 'could no more enter openly into the city, but was without in 
desert places; and they came to him from every quarter' (verse 
45 ). Let us remember that our Lord touched the leper. If the 
word of power was sufficient, why did He touch him? Evidently to 
convey the sense of His tender sympathy. The leper had probably 
for years been shut off from' the touch of man. Christ restored 
him by His touch to his lost fellowship with mankind. 

The next mighty work we read of is the healing of the sick 
of the palsy, which took place at a house in Capernaum; probably 
the house of Peter, to which Jesus had just returned from the 
missionary journey in the course of which he had healed the leper. 
St. Luke V. verse 18: 'And, behold, men brought in a bed a man 
which was taken with a palsy : and they sought means to bring him 
in, and to lay him before him'. And when they could not find by 
what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they 



SIMPLE Vl^A(L'Ui!vJ(.!. m I'Mk JJiLlLk Ml 

went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling, with 
his couch into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their 
faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. And the 
scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying. Who is this 
which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? 
But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto 
them. What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, 
Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that 
ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive 
sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee. Arise, and 
take up thy couch, and go into thine house. And immediately he 
rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and de- 
parted to his own house, glorifying God. And they were all 
amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, 
'We have seen strange things to day.' 

The scene is not difficult to realise. The eager crowd was filling 
the house, and overflowing into the street while Jesus preached 
to them. Suddenly there arrived four men carrying a completely 
paralysed friend. Finding it was impossible to get in by the door, 
they ascended the outside staircase of the house to the flat roof, 
which they dug through, and let down their friend on his pallet bed 
through the hole into the midst of the house in front of Jesus. The 
strong faith thus displayed pleased our Lord, and the first words 
He spoke to the sufferer were (St. Matthew ix. verse 2) : 'Son, be 
of good cheer: thy sins be forgiven thee.' He deliberately gave 
the paralysed man first the greater gift, the forgiveness of his 
sins, which our Lord's unerring eye at once perceived to be needed, 
before He gave the lesser gift to bodily healing for which the man 
was there. 

The Scribes and Pharisees who were present at once perceived that 
this forgiveness of sins implied the giver's Divinity, and in their 
hearts accused Him of blasphemy. He read their thoughts, and 
answered them by asking: '. . . . whether is easier to say. Thy 
sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise and walk?' (St. Matthew 
ix. verse 5). Of course the actual forgiveness of sins was more 
difficut; but it was an easy thing to say, because success could not 
be tested. Accordingly our Lord said the easier thing, which how- 
ever could be tested. He told the man to arise, take up his bed, 
and walk. The natural inference was that if the command, which 
could be tested, was miraculously obeyed, the other statement, 
which could not be tested, really issued in the spiritual miracle it 
asserted. 
Next after the calling of the four fishermen came the call of 



352 'ALL HAIL' 

Matthew (Levi), the custom-house officer. Our Lord passed by 
and saw Matthew sittmg at the receipt of custom, and said: 'Follow 
me.' He arose and left all, and followed Him. Matthew was evi- 
dentl}^ at heart already won by the teaching and personality of 
Jesus, which he must have had opportunities of knowing in the 
synagogue where Jesus preached. But he would be deterred from 
even the hope of becoming a disciple by the abhorrence with which 
his business was regarded. As little could he hope that the Great 
Prophet would take any notice of such a pariah as himself. Sud- 
denly Jesus came by, and fixed on him eyes of sympathy and love 
that thrilled his heart. Then came the wonderful invitation: 'Fol- 
low me.' Matthew answered not a word. In speechless joy he 
rose, and left all and followed Him. Thus Christ gained a faithful 
follower, and the Church an Apostle and Evangelist. 

The call of Matthew, who gave up his business to be with Christ, 
was followed by a feast given by him to his fellow-publicans. Jesus 
came to this feast. This gave great offence to the Pharisees, who 
could not conceive that any one with the slightest pretension to 
being a prophet could eat and drink with the despised taxgatherers. 
It shocked these strict religionists, who considered themselves to be 
the only good people, that Jesus should associate not only with 
taxgatherers, but with other outcasts, to whom, in contrast with 
themselves, they gave the name of sinners. 

St. Mark ii. verse 17 : 'When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them. 
They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are 
sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' 

Here we may say a word about some other objections which the' 
Scribes and Pharisees, and those who followed their guidance, ad- 
vanced against Jesus. The chief objection we have already dis- 
cussed at length : the teaching and practice of Jesus as to the Sab- 
bath. Also the disciples of Jesus did not fast regularly as a 
duty, as John's disciples had done ; and they did not keep the 
endless and ceaseless Jewish rules as to ceremonial washings. 

The calling of Matthew added a fifth to the body of the Christian 
Church. Later, after very solemn preparation on His own part, 
Jesus called the Twelve. He evidently regarded it as a most im- 
portant step in carrying out His mission. He spent the night be- 
fore in solitary prayer, on the mountain behind Capernaum, and at 
dawn called up His disciples, and out of their number, chose the 
twelve Apostles, that they might be with Him and that He might 
send them forth to preach. We do not give the names of the 
twelve Apostles here, as we have already done so. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Gospels (The Sermon on the Mount—The Raising of the 
Widow's Son at Nain— The Forgiveness of the Woman 
WHO WAS A Sinner — The Woman with the Issue of Blood 
— The Raising of Jairus' Daughter). 

Before approaching such a great and serious subject as that un- 
rivalled example of Christ's teaching, known as the Sermon on the 
Mount, we will make a few preliminary remarks. Is it not very- 
strange that there are many people who read a great deal, but who 
think that a short quarter of an hour a day is enough for the study 
of the Bible? Do we not also know that a large number of people 
do not read the Bible at all, and that a smaller, but increasing, num- 
ber have ceased to attend any place of worship ? Yet most of these 
people regard themselves as Christians! 

We possess in our Bible, and here to-day in particular, in the 
wonderful Sermon on the Mount, a never-failing fountain-head tjo 
supply the most elevated ideals of human life for all sorts and 
conditions of men. To call ourselves Christians, and to persuade 
ourselves that we have a right to the name, and yet to neglect to 
make ourselves acquainted with the teaching as well as the example 
of Christ, is surely contrary to common sense. We would not act 
thus in any other part of life. Let us glance round us and realise 
for how many things we qualify by training, both as regards our 
professions, our pastimes, our sports, our hobbies, our work, and 
our play. Then let us ask ourselves the question how much time 
of the twenty- four hours of the day and night we devote to the 
cultivation of our souls, or rather how little time we niggardly mete 
out to them? Why is it that often our religion occupies but a back 
place? To God we surely owe the most and the best of our tim«, 
and, indeed, the whole of ourselves. When the day of reckoning 
comes we shall certainly be obliged to answer for this. 

Here in the soft spring morning on the peaceful Galilean moun- 
tain height was God giving His laws again, incarnate now in the 
person of a man; no longer terrible, but attractive, drawing all men 
to Himself, ruling by the motive of love, and not by the power of 
fear. The old laws of Sinai were for the childhood of the chosen 
race, and took the simple form of prohibitions. The new laws of 

353 



354 'ALL HAIL' 

the Galilean mount were for a people who had sufficiently advanced 
in knowledge to be able to receive higher ideals and teaching The 
membership of this Kingdom was for all mankind, and all the laws 
take the form of blessings. When we read these new laws we find 
they are not commands, but descriptions of character necessary for 
the members of the Kingdom. It is necessary that the whole char- 
acter, and not a part of it, should be aimed at; the whole of the 
blessings belong to each member of the Kingdom, if they will exert 
themselves to take them. Our Lord began the Sermon on the 
Mount by enumerating these laws of the Kingdom. 

St. Matthew v. verses 3-12: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

'Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 

'Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 

'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness : 
for they shall be filled. 

'Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 

'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

'Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children 
cf God. 

'Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 

'Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in 
heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets which were before 
you.' 

Blessed means happy, and the law of the kingdom' in each place 
is seen to be the secret of happiness in this life as well as in the 
next. This blessedness our Lord offers by means of union with 
Himself, for it is a blessedness which He had already won and 
knew by experience in His own life, which He offers here to others. 
Indeed, the whole sermon may be regarded as a revelation of the 
character of God in Christ, that character which is really the 
earthly life of Jesus faithfully put into words. 

It was a spring morning on one of the mountains north of Caper- 
naum, and Jesus, who had spent the night in prayer, came d'own 
from the mountain top to found on earth the kingdom of God. A 
great crowd was waiting for Him. St. Luke's Gospel, chapter vi., 
introduces the Sermon on the Mount by a full account of the scene 
and circumstances. The crowd occupied a level plateau, and con- 
sisted of a great multitude of His disciples, and a great number 
of people not only from Judea and Jerusalem, but also from the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 355 

sea-coast of Tyre and Sidon, eager to be delivered from their 
diseases, eager to experience the healing power of His touch. The 
great Healer was for the time being to occupy Himself as the great 
Teacher — a healer still, but a healer of souls. 

After He had chosen His chief officers for the Kingdom from 
the multitude of His disciples He called up those for whom there 
was room on the mountain height, and gave them the laws of the 
Kingdom, which we call the Sermon on the Mount. These are 
called the Beatitudes or Blessings. The first one may need a 
word of explanation. To be 'poor in spirit' means to feel onself 
in need of help from God. Those will feel the need most who are 
trying most to be good; that is, God-like. They feel their own 
spiritual poverty in the presence of His infinite wealth. 

The second Beatitude is for those that mourn. Again, as in the 
first, with which it is closely connected, the meaning has to do with 
spiritual things. Every one who sees the difference between what 
he is and what he ought to be, ought to mourn for it. That is a 
mourning which shall be comforted, for it will help us to grow 
like what we ought to be. Such mourning leads to mending. 

The third Beatitude is for the meek. The meaning of this fol- 
lows out our explanations already given. Meekness means here the 
opposite of self-assertion, and follows from the spirit commended 
in Beatitudes one and two. 

The remaining five Beatitudes speak for themselves, and com- 
plete the ideal of the character of a citizen of the Kingdom. 

In the next verse (13) our Lord goes on to say to His followers: 
'Ye are the salt of the earth'; the meaning of that is that real 
Christians are the preservative that keeps from rottenness the whole 
body of the community. If they do not have such influence, they 
are worthless. 'Ye are the light of the world' (verse 14). In 
these words a similar duty to the community is enjoined. Our Lord 
went on to say that He had come to fulfil the Old Law and the 
Prophets^— not to destroy them. Christianity is the fulfilment of 
the truth latent in Judaism. All that the Old Testament pointed 
to, is to be accomplished in Christ and is chronicled in the New. 
His followers are not to be satisfied with the literal teaching of the 
Old Testament, but are to go beyond it. The spiritual meaning of 
each of the Commandments is to be reached and obeyed. And 
now we have several great commandments of Qirist, which illus- 
trate His method of interpreting the Old Testament. Instead of 
looking merely to the outside acts of man, He told His disciples 
that the root of the evil lay in the thoughts and desires. It was 
there that guilt was really incurred, and there the battle against evil 



356 ' ALL HAIL ' 

had to be won. He boldly put forward His own Command as 
the final authority, superior even to the Law of Moses. Nothing 
could be more decisive and calmly self-confident than this: 'Ye 
have heard that it was said by (to, R.V.) them of old time. Thou 
shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the 
judgment: but I say unto you. That whosoever is angry with his 
brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. . . .' 
(verses 21, 22). ('Without a cause' should be omitted, as in 
R.V.) 

Again, He deals with the Commandment against adultery in the 
same way: also with the divorce permitted by Moses, He deals 
with unhesitating directness. And other examples are given in 
the course of our Lord's teaching, of which we will quote the fol- 
lowing, which sets before us the highest and hardest of practical 
ideals, that love of enemies which is the difficult scaling of the 
heaven-kissing summits of the heavenly, the Christlike life : 

St. Matthew v. verses 43-45 : 'Ye have heard that it hath been said, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say 
unto yoii, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
Oh the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.' 

The sixth chapter begins with our Lord's warning against 
making a show before men, in three practical parts of the religious 
life: (i) Almsgiving; (2) Prayer; (3) Fasting. To make a show 
is to be a hypocrite or actor, as the word signifies. 

Now we come to the centre of the laws of the Kingdom — the 
Law of Prayer. Not only are our Lord's disciples not to make a 
show of prayer, but also they are not to think that they will be 
heard on account of the length of their prayers. And then our 
Lord went on to give an authoritative model of prayer for their 
guidance. We call this the Lord's Prayer. St. Matthew vi. verses 
9-13; 'Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy 
kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we 
forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
lis from' evil: (For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the 
glory, for ever. Amen.') The doxology is a later addition. The 
prayer ends at evil. 

The searching nature of this prayer is brought out by considering 
the request for God's forgiveness, which is made dependent on our 
forgiveness of others. If we use the prayer and forgive others, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 357 

we are forgiven. But if we use the prayer and do not forgive 
others, we are not forgiven and we practically pray that we may 
not be forgiven. Three points strike us specially in this prayer. 
What stands first in order and importance is God, and God's blessed 
purposes for all. Secondly, the user of the prayer and his wants, 
spiritual and physical, come last. Thirdly, we pray not each of 
us for himself, but each of us for ourselves and the rest of the 
Christian community. We said the prayer was a searching one : 
and we will find it so, and not solely in the petition which we 
gave as an example. Unless we are really trying to follow Christ 
in earnest, can we use any of the petitions? Real prayer will stop us 
from sinning, or else sinning will stop us from praying. It is a 
spiritual impossibility to go on in deliberate sin and, at the same 
time, to go one in earnest prayer. 

Jesus goes on to unfold the inward life that must belong to 
every member of the Kingdom. We are not to lay up for ourselves 
on the earth treasures which pass away, but treasures in heaven. 
We are not to try the impossible task of serving two masters at 
once : we must choose between God and Mammon. Therefore He 
says we are to take no thought for our life, nor for the morrow ; 
that is, we are not to be anxious about either. Christ bids us to 
behold the birds of the air: they are content to be looked after by 
God. Surely, then, God will look after us, because we are told that 
we are worth more than they. This does not mean that we are 
to sit still and do nothing, leaving God to do our work. God has 
given us powers to use, and moreover, intends them to be used. 
What He tells us here amounts to this : Use the powers which I 
provide; do your best, and leave the results to me. Remember that 
the birds are by no means examples of idleness or thoughtlessness. 
They look ahead and build their nests and prepare for their fami- 
lies : they go afield and seek for food, and provide for the little 
ones in their nests. God rewards their efforts. The birds neither 
sow nor reap, but your heavenly Father feedeth them' (St. Mat- 
thew vi. verse 27. 

Our attention is drawn next to the lilies of the field, a simple 
and beautiful teaching which needs no comment. St. Matthew vi. 
verses 28-30: 'And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow : they toil not, neither do they 
spin: and yet I say unto you. That even Solomon in all his glory 
was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe 
the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into 
the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?' 

Then he tells us not to judge others, and gives us an ilhistra- 



358 'ALL HAIL' 

tion of the mote and the beam. But He returns to what the sol- 
diers of the Kingdom need most of all in order to do their duty — 
the power of prayer by which the aid of God can always be ob- 
tained by His children. 

St. Matthew vii. verses 7-1 1: 'Ask, and it shall be given you; 
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for 
every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and 
to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there 
of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if 
he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more 
shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them 
that asked him.' 

Again, we are told to enter in by the narrow gate that leadeth 
unto life, and is missed by so many who take the broad way that 
leadeth to destruction. Christ says in St. Matthew vii. verses 24- 
27 : 'Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and do- 
eth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house 
upon a rock : and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was 
founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings 
of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, 
which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and 
the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and 
it fell : and great was the fall of it.' 

St. Matthew ends up his account of the Sermon on the Mount 
with these words: 'And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended 
these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine : for he 
taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes' (St. 
Matthew vii. verses 28, 29). 

In St. Matthew viii. verse 5 and following verses we read a 
charming story. St. Luke has the same in chapter vii. verses i-io. 

Among the many beautiful stories contained in the New Testa- 
ment, the one about the Centurion deserves a high place. A cen- 
turion was a Roman officer who had command of fifty to one hun- 
dred soldiers, and these went by the name of a century. A cen- 
turion filled a place of trust and he had to obey the orders of his 
superior officer, while he had himself to be obeyed by those under 
his command. 

We read in St. Matthew viii. verses 5, 6: 'And when Jesus was 
entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseech- 
ing him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the 
palsy, grievously tormented.' The centurion had evidently culti- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 359 

vated a feeling of pity and solicitude on behalf of the poor suf- 
ferer, the slave under his care. When at a loss what to do for 
his sick slave, the marvellous cures wrought by Christ came to his 
mind. Surely this wonderful Prophet might help him in his trou- 
ble, and be able to cure his slave. We picture him approaching 
Jesus, clad in his Roman armour, helmet on head, sandals on feet, 
breastplate on breast. Bowing before Christ, he asked for help 
from One who is ever ready to help. At once the Healer com- 
plies with his request: T will come and heal him. The centurion 
answered and said. Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest 
come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant 
shall be healed' (St. Matthew viii. verses 7, 8). The man knew 
that it was not at all necessary for Christ to take so much trouble 
en his account. He felt that it would be far too great an honour 
to expect the great Prophet of Nazareth to go to his house. The 
centurion went on to explain: Tor I am a man under authority, 
having soldiers under me : and I say to this man, Go, and he go- 
eth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh ; and to my servant, Do 
this, and he doeth it' (verse 9). If a centurion had only to give 
an order to those that were under him, how much more was this 
the case when the command came from the great Miracle-worker and 
Prophet of Nazareth. ■ He needed only to say the word : the cen- 
turion believed that the word of Jesus would insure the cure of 
this slave whom he was so fond of. His argument appealed to 
Jesus, and the faith it showed pleased Him much. 

'When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that fol- 
lowed. Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, 
not in Israel' (verse 10). 

While praising the centurion, this comment of our Lord cast 
blame on those who ought to have known better and believed more 
implicitly in Christ's teaching. Unbounded faith was here demon- 
strated by an alien, and Christ held up the centurion as a bright 
example to the Jews. 

'And I say unto you. That many shall come from the east and 
west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in 
the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be 
cast into outer darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth (verses 11, 12). 

The meaning of our Lord's words is that many would come from 
heathen lands, and with Abraham's faith share Abraham's place in 
the Kingdom of Heaven; while the children of the Kingdom, the 
unbelieving Jews, would be cast out; and the contrast between ac- 
tual membership in the Kingdom and self-banishment from it is 



36o 'ALL HAIL' 

called outer darkness. This, and the gnashing of teeth, is Jewish 
language used by the Jews of the Gentiles, but here applied M Jews. 

'And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou 
hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed 
in the self-same hour' (verse 13). 

Among the miracles which Christ wrought the most important 
were the three raisings from the dead, of which one was performed 
on the son of a widow at Nain. This word means beauty, and 
certainly this village does not belie its name. It is situated on the 
south-western slopes of the range of Mount Hermon, and over- 
looks the Plain of Esdraelon; Mount Tabor lies to the left of it, 
while you see Mount Carmel on the right. This is when you de- 
scend into the plain coming from Nazareth, and looking towards 
Nain. Not far off lie the little towns of Jezreel and Jennin. This 
Plain of Esdraelon is the battle-ground of the Israelite history, 
where each feature of the land speaks eloquently of events re- 
corded in the Bible. At sunset one evening Jesus, in one of His 
Journeys, arrived at this very Nain. 

St. Luke vii. verse 11-17: 'And it came to pass the day after, 
that he went into a city named Nain; and many of his disciples 
went with him, and much people. Now when he came nigh to the 
gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only 
son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the 
city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had com- 
passion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and 
touched the bier; and they that bare him stood still. And he said, 
Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat 
up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother. 
And there came a fear on all : and they glorified God, saying, 
That a great prophet is risen up among us ; and, That God hath 
visited his people. And this rumour of him went forth throughout 
all Judaea, and throughout all the region round about.' 

We can picture to ourselves the dusty, white-looking mountain 
road) and the funeral procession leaving the gateway of the vil- 
lage. We can see the flat-roofed and occasionally high-domed 
houses, relieved by a silvery green olive tree, or dark funereal cy- 
press; these latter shooting up like closed umbrellas. The friends 
would be accompanying the stricken mother, and all would be weep- 
ing and wailing piteously and plaintively. Christ met this funeral 
party, and went up to the open bier with the dead man upon it. 
Then Christ touched the bier and the bearers halted at the touch. 
He spoke the word of power. Arise; and the dead man sat up and 
began to speak. Then the Lord, who had wrought this great mira- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 361 

cle out of pure pity for the mother's sorrow, delivered the man He 
had raised from the dead to that happy mother's care. 

At the present day, outside the city walls, rocks are still to be 
seen, and in them sepulchral caves. Can we at all imagine the joy 
with which this great miracle was received by the mother? No 
one can explain how this mysterious exercise of superhuman power 
was carried out, 

St. Luke vii. verse 36, we read: 'And one of the Pharisees de- 
sired that he would eat v/ith him. And he went into the Phari- 
see's house, and sat down to meat.' We can imagine all the pomp 
and luxury and splendour with which this rich Pharisee was sur- 
rounded. In the centre of the courtyard would be the refreshing 
water in a handsome marble basin; the pavement would be of 
lovely coloured tiles or mosaic ; on the walls would be luxuriant 
creepers. Cushioned couches with rich Eastern embroideries would 
offer accommodation to the visitors, who would recline on these, 
leaning on one elbow in Eastern fashion. Into these surround- 
ings our Lord would walk in His simple dignity. Presently we 
would see a woman enter, poor, sad, forlorn, one who was not a 
bidden guest, but a person quite out of keeping with such select 
society. Perhaps she had been standing outside for a while, hesi- 
tating as to whether to enter or not. Of course in the East of 
that day the doors were left open, so than any one could enter 
who wished. It required a great deal of determination on her 
part to approach the One Person whom her heart was yearning 
for. A propitious moment would give her a chance of slipping in 
unobserved, and without receiving rude reprimands on the part 
of the servants who would be occupied looking after their mas- 
ter's guests. Then she would find herself in the presence of Je- 
sus. St. Luke tells graphically the story of this woman: 'And, 
behold a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew 
that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an ala- 
baster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him, weep- 
ing, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with 
the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with 
the ointment' (St. Luke vii. verses Z7, 38). 

There was this woman just sobbing her heart out. She had 
followed Jesus about, and seen people leave His Presence freed, 
not only from aches and pains, but from the pangs of a hopeless 
slavery to sin. She herself had known only too well what the 
load of sin meant. She longed to be a better woman: her sins 
burnt within her like fire. Never could . she forget them day or 
night: she longed to be washed clean. She wondered whether 



362 'ALL HAIL' 

there could possibly be a healing from' sin for her. At first she 
shrank from obtruding herself; then she summoned up courage. 
Oh! to be made white, and to gain forgiveness. But in the town 
everybody knew her bad character; she had been notorious in the 
place. No, she had been too bad a woman; she felt it was to 
expect too much, that there should be a chance for her. Yet she 
approached unseen, and standing behind at His feet weeping, she 
washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair, and 
kissed His feet and anointed them with her precious ointment. 
Jesus did not rebuke or repulse her; nay, He seemed to encourage a 
hope of pardon by His gentle silence. 

'Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him' saw it, he spake 
within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would 
have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth 
him: for she is a sinner' (verse 39). 

How could Jesus, if He were really a Prophet and a Holy Man, 
have any care for or anything to do with a sinful woman? The 
Pharisee argued that the One whom he had bidden to his feast 
could not possibly be a prophet at all. How mistaken was the 
Pharisee's idea of holiness. Jesus of course read the Pharisee's 
thoughts. For the purpose of teaching the Pharisee, Jesus asked 
him a question. 

St. Luke vii. verses 40-43 : ' . . ... Simon, I have some- 
thing to say unto thee. And he saith. Master, say on. There was 
a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hun- 
dred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to 
pay, he frankly forgave them' both. Tell me therefore, which of 
them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose 
that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou 
hast rightly judged.' Directly Jesus had brought home the les- 
son to Simon, and had given him a great deal to think about, and 
had made him' see the case in its true light. He turned to the 
woman, and addressing Simon, said to him : 'Seest thou this 
woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water 
for my feet. . . .' (verse 44). This was a discourteous omis- 
sion on the part of the Pharisee. The very first thing that every- 
body was offered in the East was water wherewith to wash off the 
dust of recent travel from the sandalled or naked feet. What the 
reason of this inhospitable act was on the part of the rich Jew 
we do not know. Probably he did not think much of a prophet 
unmistakably poor in this world's goods, though he was willing 
enough to patronise him'. Jesus pointed out the lack of hospital- 
ity: even the sinful woman knew better. Jesus says of her that 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 363 

'she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the 
hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman, since 
the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with 
oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman anointed my feet with 
ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, 
are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, 
the same loveth little' (verses 44-47). 

So we see that this poor sinner was fully forgiven, that her load 
was taken from her. Love, the great cleansing power, filled her 
soul, and 'he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God' (i John iv. 
verse 16). Christ had received her into His Grace. 'And he said 
unto her, Thy sins are forgiven' (verse 48). The proof of her 
forgiveness was the fact that she loved. Think of her gratitude! 
And think of her blessed state henceforth. 

'And they that sat at meat with him began to say within them- 
selves. Who is this that forgiveth sins also?', (verse 49). The as- 
sembled guests marvelled at all that had taken place, and. must 
have been deeply impressed by all they had seen and heard. The 
parting words of Jesus to the woman were : 'Thy faith hath saved 
thee; go in peace' (verse 50). 

We ought to meditate often on Christ's forgiveness of sins, and 
feel assured that His forgiveness will be extended to each one of 
us, provided that we approach Him with penitence and in faith 
and love. . 

In the following chapter (Luke viii. verses 1-3) we hear about 
other women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. 
Of one called Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus had cast seven 
devils. Of another called Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's 
steward, and Susanna, and many others who we are told 'minis- 
tered unto him of their substance' (verse 3), Christ passed on and 
visited many cities and villages, 'preaching and shewing the glad 
tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him' 
(verse i). 

St. Matthew viii. verses 23-27, St. Mark iv. verses 35-41, St. 
Luke viii. verses 22-25. We must be sure and read these pass- 
ages for ourselves in the Bible. By night as by day the Lake of 
Galilee showed itself to me when I was there in its perfect beauty. 
Green slopes gently inclined towards the water, leaving just a 
yellow margin, a narrow strip of shore like the frame round a 
mirror. The water now looks sapphire blue, now emerald green, 
according to the sun and cloud effects. A wild profusion of flow- 
ers, luxurious in colour and varied in shape, lends interest and 
charm to the scene. We remember that Jesus dwelt here, and 



364 ' ALL HAIL ' 

drank in all nature's beauties, which His Father had so lovingly 
provided in this land which was now His home. On the moun- 
tains all around our Lord had prayed ; on the lake he had sailed, 
and on the shore He had taught. The tumble-down castle of the 
ancient town of Tiberias lay on my left hand as I sat in 
front of my tent and tried to receive an indelible impression 
into my mind from the solemn associations of those hal- 
lowed surroundings. The marks of past splendour have well-nigh 
disappeared ; not so the marks of God's handiwork. The distin- 
guishing features of the land remain unchanged, and will forever 
charm and inspire every one who is privileged to dwell here for a 
time. Further down the lake, beyond Tiberias, built in our Lord's 
lifetime, there were pointed out to me the sites of Bethsaida, Ca- 
pernaum, Magdala, and many ofther historical places. As you 
sail to the extreme end of the lake, you see the Jordan passing into 
it, lazily and almost imperceptibly, and very muddily, as though 
it were weary with its journey through hot and dusty lands; very 
different it is from the boyish mirth and fantastic frolic of young 
Jordan, whose acquaintance you make when you reach the north- 
ern point of the ancient land of Palestine near Caesarea Philippi. 
We have just spoken of the lake in its calm aspect, but we well 
know that a land-locked lake as well as the open ocean can change 
its mood. We also know that calm and peace can forsake our 
own heart and soul. Thus it would appear we are all subject to 
the same influences as God's nature, of which nature we are part. 
Angry billows and violent storms can assail us, when we put out 
upon the open waters of life. On the memorable occasion we are 
thinking about at this moment, we see the Lord Jesus in a boat 
on the lake with His disciples. 

St. Luke viii. verses 22-25 :'.... and he said unto them. 
Let us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they launched 
forth. But as they sailed he fell asleep : and there came down a 
storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and 
were in jeopardy. And they came to him, and awoke him, say- 
ing, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the 
wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there 
was a calm. And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And 
they, being afraid, wondered, saying one to another. What man- 
ner of man is this! For he commandeth even the winds and 
water, and they obey him.' 

We see one of these sudden movements of natural forces which 
caused great fear to the companions of Jesus. In contrast to this, 
we note the perfect calmness of our Saviour reflected in His 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 365 

words. We see His superhuman power to save under any cir- 
cumstances. And this power is not exercised in a spasmodic man- 
ner; His help is steady, sure, and absolutely trustworthy. 

Jesus arrived on the opposite bank of the lake, where the moun- 
tains are wild and rugged. \The country belonged to the Ger- 
gasenes, or rather, to give the correct spelling, Gerasenes. The 
place where they landed was called Gerasa. At once, before it was 
even possible for our Lord to have recovered from the fatigues 
and effects of the storm-tossed passage across the lake, a hideous 
sight met his eyes. This was a poor man possessed by devils, who 
lived like a hunted animal away from the homes of men, among the 
cave tombs. He was of such strength that he had broken his 
chains and torn off his clothing and wandered about naked, cutting 
himself with stones, crying day and night at the top of his voice. 
Our Saviour, notwithstanding His own exhausted condition, at 
once took pity on the maniac. 

St. Mark v. verses 6-9: '. . . . when he saw Jesus afar off, 
he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice, and said. 
What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high 
God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he 
said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And 
he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My 
name is Legion: for we are many.' 

Jesus then delivered the man from his madness by casting out 
the evil spirit. 'And they come to Jesus, and see him that was 
possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, 
and in his right mind: and they were afraid' (verse 15). How our 
Lord cast out the evil spirit, out of this or any man, is beyond 
our power to explain ; but of the fact that He performed this and 
other miracles of the same kind, we have ample evidence in the 
widespread reputation He acquired for such marvellous cures. 
The man thus delivered prayed that he might continue with Jesus, 
but no doubt for his own good that he might have to depend upon 
himself, he was sent away by the Saviour with the words, 'Go home 
to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done 
for thee, and hath had compassion on thee' (verse 19). 

Jesus and His disciples returned to the opposite side of the lake 
once more. No sooner did He arrive at Capernaum than His 
time and attention were claimed by Jairus, who met Him, saying 
that his little daughter lay at the point of death. In his agony 
he appealed to Jesus, knowing the multitude of cures He had per- 
formed. Our Lord did not hesitate, but followed the father to 
his house through a thronging crowd. Suddenly Jesus felt that 



366 'ALL HAIL' 

somebody was touching Him. St. Matthew ix. verse 20, St. Mark 
V. verse 25, and St. Luke viii. verse 43, tell us this pathetic inci- 
dent. The touch was that of a poor woman afflicted for twelve 
long years with a grievous malady, an issue of blood. She went 
to the fountain-head of healing, to this great and good Prophet of 
Nazareth. Hoping to escape observation, she timidly touched the 
hem of His garment, arid immediately she was made whole. 

St. Mark v. verses 30-32: 'And Jesus, immediately knowing in 
himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the 
press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said 
unto him. Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest 
thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her 
that had done this thing.' 

The woman came trembling and fell down before Him', and told 
Him all the truth. St. Matthew ix. verse 22: 'Jesus turned him 
about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good com- 
fort: thy faith hath made thee whole.' He had healed the woman, 
and her faith had made her able to receive His healing. 

St. Mark v. verses 35-42 : 'While he yet spake, there came from 
the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said. Thy daugh- 
ter is dead : why troublest thou the Master any further ? As soon 
as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler 
of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. And he suffered 
no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John, the 
brother of James. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of 
the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and 
wailed greatly. And when He was come in, he saith unto them. 
Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but 
sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put 
them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, 
and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel 
was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto 
her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted. Damsel, I say unto 
thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose and walked ; for 
she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished 
with a great astonishment.' 

This account is far more detailed and vivid than that in St. 
Matthew or St. Luke, and one naturally asks from' whom was it 
obtained? Obviously from one of the three who accompanied our 
Lord to Jairus' house and saw the miracle performed. The well- 
supported tradition that this Gospel contains the memoirs of St. 
Peter shows us from whom. Readers of this miracle have some- 
times found a difficulty in the statement that our Lord turned out 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 367 

those who were bewailing the damsel. The explanation is that 
they were hired mourners; their grief was fictitious, and their 
scornful unbelief made them quite unsuitable persons to be present 
at the miracle. 

Hardly had Jesus departed thence when He was followed by 
two blind men, who kept crying after Him: Thou son of David, 
have mercy on us' (St. Matthew ix. verse 27). Jesus asked them: 
'Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him', Yea, 
Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your 
faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened' (St. Matthew 
ix. verses 28-30). 

Many were the aching hearts, and many the weary souls that 
found help, and hope, and sustenance, and strength at this time. 
Care was wiped away; cures were effected. A light was kindled 
never to be extinguished. Seed was sown for the full harvest of 
God's Kingdom on earth. And during all this great period of 
Christ's teaching, one idea was never lost sight of by Him: and 
that was the Kingdom of God, a life of self-denying love and will- 
ing service which constitutes that Kingdom on earth. This King- 
dom is the Kingdom of God, but our Lord Himself is the direct 
ruler, as the accredited representative of the Father in Heaven. 
Righteousness, a pure life, good done to others ; these are what 
He continually insists upon as being essential. He was in the 
midst of the people, daily seen by everybody, living His own life 
as a proof how the perfect life could be lived, and was to be lived 
by those who accepted Him as Lord. He was there to show us 
that God rules the universe by invisible but immutable laws, within 
us as well as without us, which have been ever since the world 
began, and remain unchangingly true for all eternity. Only by 
obedience to those laws can any of His human creatures arrive at 
lasting satisfaction and ultimate and final good, which is to be 
identified with the will of God. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

The Gospels (The Sending Forth of the Twelve Apostles — 
The Feeding of the Five Thousand — Miracles on the 
Lake — Walking on the Water — The Journey through 
Phcenicia — The Confession of Peter, the Rock-founda- 
tion OF THE Church — The Transfiguration). 

Thus far we have been occupying ourselves with some of the 
events which took place in the middle period of Christ's Ministry: 
but we must leave much untouched and untold, which should be 
sought out by earnest, persistent and methodical reading of the 
Gospels. 

Now we have come to the sending forth of the Apostles to teach 
and to spread the Good News. St. Matthew x. verse i, St, Mark 
vi. verses 7-13, and St. Luke ix. verses 1-6, have passages on this 
subject. In details they vary; substantially they agree. It is al- 
ways best for us to turn to the actual words of the Gospels. In 
St. Matthew x. verse i we read : 'And when he had called unto him 
his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to 
cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner 
of disease.' These twelve Apostles were commanded at present not 
to go into Gentile cities. These twelve Jesus sent forth, and com- 
manded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into 
any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel' (St. Matthew x. verses 5, 6). Our 
Lord's own mission was in the same way first to the Jews, and only 
after the Jews to the Gentiles. 

'And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: 
freely ye have received, freely give' (verses 7, 8). 

This means that Christ freely gives us power to do what He bids 
us do, and also that whatever advantage and whatever blessing we 
possess we are called upon as a duty to share freely with others. 

Christ's charge to the Twelve went on: 'Provide neither gold, 
nor silver, nor brass in your purses. Nor scrip for your journey, 
neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves : for the workman 
is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall 
enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go 
thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the 

368 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 369 

house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not 
worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not 
receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house 
or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It 
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in 
the day of judgment, than for that city' (St. Matthew x. verses 

9-15). 

We, like the Apostles, are to be Christ's messengers, and take 
His word to all people, and we must expect the difficulties which 
our Lord foresaw in giving the Good News of the Kingdom to 
others. The chief way in which this message must be conveyed 
by all of us is by the witness-bearing of consistent Christian lives. 

Jesus went on to say to His Apostles : 'Behold I send you forth 
as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as ser- 
pents, and harmless as doves' (verse 16). 

His messengers must be prepared to be firm and wise, while 
gentle in all their dealings. He predicted that His disciples .would 
have to suffer persecutions and troubles of all kinds : He advised 
them to be meek and patient under them. If their Lord had to 
suffer, they must expect to suffer. 'The disciple is not above 
his master. ... It is enough that he be as his master' (verses 

24, 25). 

St. Matthew x. verses 21, 22: 'And the brother shall deliver up 
the brother to death, and the father the child : and the children 
shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to 
death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but 
he that endureth to the end shall be saved.' 

This definite prediction of our Lord was literally fulfilled, first 
in the persecutions carried on by the Jews against the infant 
Church, and afterwards in the persecutions on a much larger scale 
by the Roman Emperors, who set before them deliberately the ex- 
tirpation of the Christian religion. He told them that in these 
trials they must simply trust to God. 

'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them 
shall not fall on the ground without your. Father. But the very 
hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are 
of more value than many sparrows. Whosoever therefore shall 
confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father 
which is in heaven' (St. Matthew x. verses 29-33). 

In the same chapter of St. Matthew we read in verses 34-38: 
'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I came not to 
send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at vari- 
ance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and 



370 'ALL HAIL' 

the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes 
shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or 
mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son 
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh 
not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.' 

The coming of the Prince of Peace must bring conflict — the 
conflict of good against evil, of light against darkness. As long 
as the reign of evil and darkness is left to continue unchallenged 
over mankind, this conflict does not arise; but as soon as the true 
King comes, the false king, the prince of Evil, will fight for his 
sovereignty, and the long struggle begins which will continue till 
the victory of Christ is assured. That conflict began with the com- 
ing of Christ, and is going on to-day in the twentieth century, 
though in different forms to those of the first century. The Cap- 
tain of our Salvation, who led and leads the army of light, Him- 
self first bore the brunt of the battle, and, by the sacrifice of Him- 
self, conquered. It is by the sacrifice of themselves that His sol- 
diers must conquer also. Our Father in Heaven sympathises ten- 
derly with all His struggling children, for even the death of a 
sparrow concerns the All-Father's Heart, the Heart which loves 
and sustains all that He has created. 

This beautiful chapter closes with the touching words of Christ: 
'. . , . whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little 
ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I 
say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.' 

We see that not the smallest acts of kindness ever goes unnoticed 
by our Lord. Loving acts form the Christ-like character, and that 
character so formed is to be our exceeding great reward. 

During this period of our Lord's ministry a great miracle was 
performed at Bethsaida Julias — the feeding of the five thousand. 
(All four Gospels have accounts of this — St. Matthew xiv. verses 
13-21, St. Mark vi. verses 32-44, St. Luke ix. verses 11-17, St. John 
vi. verses 5-15.) St. John gives by far the most vivid and interest- 
ing details. 

St. John i. verses i, 2 : 'After these things Jesus went over the 
sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multi- 
tude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on 
them that were diseased.' 

Jesus went by boat to Bethsaida, and the people, knowing where 
He was going, followed Him by land round the head of the lake. 
Probably the greatness of the multitude was caused by the fact 
that the Passover was at hand, and people had already arrived at 
the lake-side towns on their way to it. It was not till their coming 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 37i 

that our Lord, wtio had been teaching them, noticed the need of 
the multitude, who were far from home and had nothing to eat. 
Jesus 'saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these 
may eat?' (verse 5). It is added in the Gospel that 'this he said 
to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. Philip 
answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient 
for them, that every one of them may take a little' (verses 6, 7). 

'Pennyworth' of bread means rather sevenpence worth, the 
denarius being a small silver coin of about that value; that is to 
say, six or seven pounds' worth of bread would have been required 
to supply even a scanty meal. Christ had already fed the multi- 
tude with spiritual food, the Bread from Heaven. 

'Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him; There is a lad 
here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes : but what 
are they among so many?' (verses 8, 9). The details that the 
loaves were barley loaves, which was the poorest and cheapest kind 
of bread, and that the fishes were small, we owe to St. John. This 
was the provision for our Lord and His disciples probably till the 
next day. Here we see the extreme poverty in which our Lord 
lived. They had money in the common purse to give to the poor, 
because they denied themselves and lived on the commonest food. 
This was not asceticism, but self-denial for the sake of others. The 
words 'small fishes' is one word in the original, and means a sa- 
voury eaten with bread, what we would call a sort of dried sar- 
dine from the lake. 

Here St. Mark's account is the most detailed and vivid; St. 
Mark vi. verses 39-42: 'And he commanded them to make all sit 
down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down 
in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties. And when he had taken the 
five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, 
and brake tfie loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before 
them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they 
did all eat, and were filled.' 

The word 'ranks' means literally 'flower-beds,' the vivid memory 
of the Apostle Peter recalling the scene— the bright-coloured 
clothes of the crowd showing on the green grass like beds of many- 
coloured flowers. We gather from the account that the people 
sat on the lower slopes of the hillside, and from the fact that the 
grass was abundant and green, we perceive that it was in the 
springtime the miracle took place. It was evident that the disci- 
ples had by this time learned to believe implicitly in their Lord. 
They did not hesitate to arrange the people for a meal, when 
there was practically no food to give them. We may also note 



372 'ALL HAIL' 

that Jesus, as was His habit at meals, took the bread, and gave 
thanks, and brake it. The language used recalls the Holy Eu- 
charist. We may add that probably the thanksgiving used by our 
Lord was the Jewish grace used when the food eaten was chiefly 
bread. Another grace was used when the food consisted of fish 
or meat. The words of the grace, whether given in Aramaic or 
Greek, were probably these : 'Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, One 
God, King of the World, Who causest to come forth bread from' 
the earth.' 

We must not forget a sequel of this miracle, which has a practical 
lesson for us. 

St. John vi. 12, 13 : 'When they were filled, he said unto his 
disciples. Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be 
lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve 
baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which re- 
mained over and above unto them that had eaten.' 

Our Lord's example is always intended for our learning, and 
here we see Him teaching economy as a virtue that must be sought 
by all His followers, inasmuch as it is a part of the Master's own 
conduct and character. By implication this amounts to the con- 
demnation of all waste. 

The immediate effect of this miracle on the multitude was a 
great outburst of popular enthusiasm for the worker of the mira- 
cle. St. John vi. 14: 'Then those men, when they had seen the 
miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that 
should come into the world.' 

This was the kind of prophet the dullest of those sense-bound 
minds could appreciate ; one who had made five loaves into food 
tor five thousand; such a prophet as seemed to them the coming 
one, the Messiah, beyond a doubt. The embers of the Great Hope 
kept alive in the hearts of the people for centuries, burst forth 
into flame under the influence of a miracle which they had all 
seen with their eyes, and tasted the result of with their mouths. 
Here was the real Messiah. An immense enthusiasm moved them 
to make Him Israel's king. Knowing probably from past experi- 
ence that He would not be willing to accept kingship, this great 
crowd of five thousand men resolved to seize Him and force Him 
to put Himself at their head. 

St. John vi. 15 : 'When Jesus perceived they would come and 
take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a 
mountain himself alone.' 

Our Lord had come to establish a very different Kingdom to that 
tvhich they desired. His Kingdom was to be a society of men and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 373 

women, a brotherhood closely united and moved one and all by His 
spirit breathed into them by Himself. Even H'is disciples, whom 
He had taught what this Kingdom meant, misunderstood Him, 
and hankered after the material Kingdom of the Messianic Ex- 
pectation, in which they hoped themselves to occupy high places 
as friends and companions of the King. From this final refusal 
of our Lord to accept the earthly kingship which the people wished 
to force upon Him we may date the beginning of the decline of 
the great popularity which He had reached at this time. In this 
connection we may note that had our Lord consented, His success 
as an earthly conqueror would have been almost certain; for in 
the same part of the world, and with a similar but inferior Semitic 
race, Mahomet, some hundreds of years after, achieved a gigantic 
success. The splendid fighting of the Jews, especially of the Gali- 
leans against the trained legions of Rome, about forty years later, 
shows what material Jesus would have had at His command had 
He yielded to the temptation of putting Himself at the head of an 
enthusiastic people, and winning an earthly kingdom' by the sword ; 
but this would have lost the spiritual kingdom still growing to-day. 

On Good Friday, in the year 1905, I was beside this lake. My 
tent was pitched on the sward quite near to the water, so that I 
could hear the lisping of the wavelets on the shore. The lake has 
its own unique charm, radiant with the recollection of the one per- 
fect life. Through every change, whether of sunshine or of storm, 
the remembered presence is ever at hand. The Eastern twilight 
passed at a stride into the darkness, and the moon rose and sailed 
silently on its way, growing in brightness and intensity until the 
lake was sheeted in purest silver. The full moon's rays fell upon 
the quivering surface of the water. All was hushed; all was awe- 
inspiring. Nature, for this time at any rate, was in harmony with 
the soul of man. With love and reverence one's thoughts dwelt 
on the events in the life of our Lord associated with the scene. 

The two next miracles were performed on this lake. We find 
them recorded in three Gospels: St. Matthew xiv. verses 22-36; 
St. Mark vi. verses 46-56; and St. John vi. verses 16-21. After 
the five thousand had been fed, St. Mark vi. verse 45 and following 
erses says: 'And straightway he constrained his disciples to get 
into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, 
while he sent away the people. And when he had sent them away 
he departed into a mountain to pray. And when even was come, 
the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land.' 

St. John vi. verse 18 says: 'And the sea arose by reason of s 
great wind that blew.' 



374 'ALL HAIL' 

In St. Matthew xiv. verse 24 we read: 'But the ship was now 
in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was con- 
trary.' 

St. Mark vi. verse 48 says: 'And he saw them toiling in rowing.' 
St. John vi. verse 19 : 'So when they had rowed about five and 
twenty or thirty furlongs.' St. Matthew xiv. verse 25 : *. . , . 
in the fourth watch (3 to 6 a.m.) of the night Jesus went unto 
them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walk- 
ing on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit ('appari- 
tion,' R.V.) ; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus 
spake unto them', saying, Be of good cheer ; it is I ; be not afrai<i. 
And Peter answered him; and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me to 
come unto thee on the water. And he said. Come. And when 
Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to 
go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; 
and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And im- 
mediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said 
unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?' 

The failure which followed Peter's doubt reminds us of the im- 
mense power of faith. So long as Peter believed, he was able to 
obey his Lord and and walk on the water as He did. Is not this 
certainly true, in the spiritual sphere, of all followers of Christ? 
The power of faith gives the power of obedience in the most dif- 
ficult circumstances. 

St. Matthew xiv. verses 32, 33: 'And when they (Christ and 
Peter) were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that 
were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth 
thou art the Son of God.' 

Soon after this Jesus returned to Capernaum. And there the 
great crisis in popular opinion took place. The first turning in the 
tide of national enthusiasm for Jesus was after the miracle of the 
feeding of the five thousand, when He refused to yield to their 
efi:orts to take Him by force and make Him their earthly king. 
Apparently they thought that He refused the kingship out of fear 
of the consequences or doubt of His own capacity for the Messiah- 
ship, and disappointment and dissatisfaction at Christ's attitude 
soon grew into defection among his adherents. This was helped 
on by His great mystic discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum, 
when He put Himself forward as the Bread of Life to believers. 
Such passages as St. John vi. verse 51: 'I am the living bread 
which came down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he 
shall live forever : and the bread that I will give is my flesh, 
which I will give for the life of the world,' aroused questioning 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 375 

and dissent in materialistic minds. 'How can this man give us 
his flesh to eat?' said they. To which Jesus answered (St. John 
vi. verses 53-56) : 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat 
the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life 
in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eter- 
nal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is 
m.eat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my 
flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.' 

This teaching in the synagogue caused many of His disciples to 
murmur. St. John vi. verses 61-69: 'When Jesus knew in him- 
self that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth 
this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend 
up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the 
flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are 
spirit and they are life. But there are some of you that believe 
not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that 
believed not, and who should betray him. And he said, There- 
fore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were 
given unto him of my Father. From that time many of his dis- 
ciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus 
unto the twelve. Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter an- 
swered him. Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that 
Christ, the Son of the living God.' 

Our Lord's reply shows that Peter spoke in the name of the 
Twelve, to whom our Lord's question had been put: 'Will ye also 
go away?' The reason for this question comes out in our Lord's 
words in John vi. 70 : 'Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen 
you twelve, and one of you is a devil?' The disaffection had 
reached the Twelve. The only Judasan among them, the man of 
Kerioth, represented this feeling, and his mind was already mov- 
ing in the direction which issued in the Betrayal. Apparently he 
acquiesced in Peter's fervent expression of the loyalty of the 
Twelve, but Jesus knew what was in the heart of each, and His 
words here foreshadow His plainer indication of the traitor at the 
Last Supper. 

Our Lord was now to change His mode of life. Hitherto He 
had gone about openly among the people, preaching the Kingdom 
and healing the sick. From this time until the events of the last 
week of His life He sought retirement as much as possible, in 
order to have time to train the Twelve to carry on His work after 
His departure, without the ceaseless interruptions from Scribes and 
Pharisees sent down from Jerusalem to question and criticise Him, 



Zy^ 'ALL HAIL' 

as well as from the eager multitudes. These still desired an earthly 
Messiah, and as His teaching became fuller and deeper, and re- 
vealed that spiritual union with Him constituted membership in the 
Kingdom and salvation, they murmured and opposed him more and 
more. 

Jesus now set out with the Twelve for a long journey, and this 
took a new direction. The little party travelled on foot towards 
the Mediterranean, through a region thickly filled with a heathen 
population. This district, 'the borders of Tyre and Sidon' as St. 
Mark calls it, lay north of Galilee, and spread from' the Mediter- 
ranean to the Jordan. When Christ arrived here we read in St. 
Mark vii. verse 24, he 'entered an house, and would have no man 
know it: but he could not be hid.' The object of His journey 
was retirement. He 'withdrew' thither, says St. Matthew. The 
house where he first sought shelter was on the border between 
Galilee and the Tyre and Sidon district. The fame of Jesus, how- 
ever, as a Worker of Miracles had spread even throughout this 
heathen region,, and somehow the news that the Great Prophet was 
in this house had reached a heathen woman who was in great need 
of help. 

St. Mark vii. verse 25 : '. . . . a certain woman, whose young 
daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him', and came and fell at 
his feet : the woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation ; and 
she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her 
daughter. But Jesus said unto her. Let the children first be filled: 
for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto 
the dogs. And she answered, and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet 
the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said 
unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy 
daughter. And when she was come to her house, she found the 
devil gone out, and her daughter lay upon the bed.' 

Our Lord's unusual attitude towards this woman evidently sprang 
from the desire to draw out her latent faith to its full power, by 
the difficulty He interposed. But His words did not deter the 
woman, for she felt behind the words the sympathy and lovingkind- 
ness of the speaker. Her faith grew with the difficulty, and in 
humble but trustful speech she expressed it, and received the glad 
approval, and the gift for which she had come as a suppliant to 
Jesus. 

His mercy to the Syrophenician woman and her daughter de- 
feated His object of obtaining privacy and retirement in Phoenicia. 
St. Mark tells us (taking the correct reading of St. Mark vii. verse 
31 as 'through Sidon') that after a circuit through the territory of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE Z77 

Sidon He made His way into Decapolis, probably through some 
of the foothills of the Hermon range. Decapolis was an essen- 
tially heathen country in the Tetrarchy of Philip. There the heathen 
people again besought the Great Healer for help. 

St. Mark vii. verses 32-35 : 'And they bring unto him one that 
was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseecl^i 
him to put his hand upon him. And he took him aside from the 
multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched 
his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto 
him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears 
were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake 
plain.' 

Our Lord's use of the Aramaean language here suggests that there 
were others present who understood that language, because, of 
course, the deaf man could not hear. The words *He sighed' per- 
haps require a little explanation. Why did our Lord sigh? Pos- 
sibly because He could only restore this one sufferer out of the 
many sufferers in this region which He was immediately to leave, 
as He knew that the report of this miracle would bring the crowds 
upon Him once more. 

Or more probably for this reason : the burden of the world'? 
suffering as of the world's sin had to be borne and was borne b;- 
Him, and in a wondrous way by the power of His universal sympa- 
thy the words of the Prophet of old concerning the suffering Mes- 
siah in Him were fulfilled. St. Matthew viii. verse 17 : 'That it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esias the prophet, saying, 
Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.' 

St. Mark vii. verses 36, Z7 '■ 'And he charged them' that they 
should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the 
more a great deal they published it; and were beyond measure as- 
tonished, saying. He hath done all things well : he maketh both the 
deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.' 

Now we come to a crisis in our Lord's life and in the lives of 
His disciples. Jesus had gone with them northward to Csesarea 
Philippi, which was a town built by Philip the Tetrarch in honour of 
Caesar. The same place goes to-day by the name of Banias, for- 
m.erly Paneas, which had for its derivation the name of Pan, a 
Greek god. History has much to tell of this place. It is dis- 
tinguished by the beauty of its position; for nature has endowed it 
with a lavish hand. It is situated not very far from the foot of 
Mount Hermon. A striking feature there, on the face of one of 
the red-coloured mountains (the latter acting like a kind of nat- 
ural background to the scenery which meets the eye) is to-day a 



378 'ALL HAIL' 

cave which was formerly a sanctuary of the god Pan. Here King 
Herod, on receiving the Tetrarchy, erected a temple to Caesar Au- 
gustus, his benefactor. At a later date captive Jews were brought 
to Csesarea Philippi, and were made to fight with wild beasts, as 
the custom was in the Coliseum at Rome. The place abounds with 
Roman architectural remains. 

On Easter Sunday, 1905, I found myself here. We were en- 
camped on a mountain slope rather high up, giving me a view of 
all the country round. Beneath in a gorge, in wildest mood, danced 
and foamed young Jordan through the rocks and boulders of its 
channel. In whatever direction I looked, all was clad in luxuriant 
green. The tents were pitched in a perfect grove of mulberry and 
olive and fig trees, affording most grateful shelter from the sun, 
which was shining down in all its Eastern strength. My tired ani- 
mals, which had had a fatiguing morning's journey, starting at sun- 
rise, revelled in the freedom from their loads, disporting them- 
selves under tamarinth and olive trees on the green and grassy 
camping-ground with great enjoyment, which was a delight to see 
in a country where, alas ! their poor creature wants are but scantily 
attended to. One longs for the coming of the Spirilt of the 
Saviour, who held all His Father's creatures in such affectionate 
regard, and whose tender heart would bleed at seeing them ill- 
treated, and at finding how little His lessons have been taken to 
heart. 

The crumbling remains of an archway, which gave me welcome 
as I passed under it, seemed very doubtful as to whether they would 
continue to rest upon the supporting stonework, or whether they 
would abruptly part company from it forthwith. A huge stone 
slab, which bore traces of a Roman inscription greatly effaced, was 
poised on two pillars, and one felt thankful when one had safely 
passed from under it. A fine ruin, full of historical associations, 
built on an eminence, still seems to guard this beauteous place. The 
birds were singing and chasing one another in the branches over- 
head, the air was astir with bees and beetles sucking nectar and am- 
brosia from' the beautiful flowers growing in wild profusion all 
around. Brilliant butterflies were wafted across one's line of vision 
at intervals. Owing to their chrysalis birth, butterflies are some- 
times regarded as emblems of immortality. The sight of them 
suggested the fancy that souls of the past were holding communion 
with us in the place where they once had lived and loved. No 
human voice was heard. As one lay stretched out on the sward, 
looking up into the blue vault of heaven, one was transported into 
a different world. Time seemed no longer to exist. Earth and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 379 

eternity seemed to be as one. I did not awake from my day-dream 
until some little native children, with intensely dark eyes, had ap- 
proached, and were looking at me, perhaps with little less wonder 
than I at them. Thees little creatures had been driven by curi- 
osity to see for themselves what interlopers had broken in upon 
their otherwise secluded existence, and brightened for a while the 
monotony of their every-day life. They were attractive little be- 
ings. By-and-by quite a number of little ones had collected, ^^'e 
could not reach one another by means of language, as I could not 
speak Arabic. A bond of sympathy drew us together, and before 
many minutes had passed, we were all playing and enjoying ourselves. 
These little Arab children were delighted with a game of oranges an -\ 
lemons, laughing and dancing for joy just as English children do. 

It was in this district, td which our Lord had withdrawn with th-: 
Twelve, that the definite foundation of the Christian Church was 
laid, and it may have been that the rock-wall at Csesarea Philippi 
suggested to Christ the form of the reply in which He received 
Peter's confession. The castle built on the high rock-wall may 
have suggested the picture of the Church built on the rock. Jesu? 
introduced the great question by asking His disciples (St. Mark 
viii. verse 27) : 'Whom do men say that I am?' Our Lord's method 
was here, as always, not to tell His disciples directly, but to le?vd 
them to find out the truth for themselves. 

St. Mark viii. verses 28-30: 'And they answered, John the Bap- 
tist: but some say Elias ; and others, One of the prophets. And 
he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter ar- 
sv/ereth and saith unto him, Thoii art the Christ. And he charged 
them that they should tell no man of him.' 

St. Matthew's account here is fuller than St. Mark's. 

St. Matthew xvi. verses 16-19: 'And Simon Peter answered and 
said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesr.. 
answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona : 
for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, 
and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail aganist it. And I will give unto thee the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose 
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' 

The Apostles had found out the truth for themselves, or rather, 
God had revealed it to their seeking; and Peter, as their spokes- 
man, had declared it. On this true confession of Peter and the 
other Apostles, Christ was to build His Church, and as we know. 



38o 'ALL HAIL* 

He did so build it. To Peter, and to the other Apostles, whom he 
represented, the Gospel was given to be, to ttiose who received 
it, the key to open the way for them into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

As to the meaning of the binding and loosing, we gain light from 
our Lord's words after His resurrection, when in the Upper Room 
He breathed on His disciples and said unto "them : 'Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained' (St. 
John XX. verses 22, 23). 

This power of remitting or retaining sins was given, not to the 
Apostles only, for in the Upper Room, in addition to the Apos- 
tles, there were other Christians with them. It was given to the 
whole Christian community, of which the Apostles were at that 
time the representatives or heads. Those who accept the Christian 
Revelation, accept it with remission of their sins, i.e., deliverance 
from their power. Those who reject it, reject the remission of 
sins it brings, and so their sins are retained. Therefore those who 
bring the Christian Revelation to any one may be spoken of as re- 
mitting or retaining sins, according as it is accepted or rejected. 

To return to Peter's confession. Though it leaped forth from 
the mouth of the Apostle in a moment, as Jordan leaps from the 
cave in the rock which gives it birth, the faith which found ex- 
pression in the confession had grown long and gradually from Pe- 
ter's and the other Apostles' continuous experience of their Lord. 

Our Lord's question brought a critical time to the Apostles, and 
we have seen how faithfully they met it in the confession of Peter. 
A critical time also comes to each one of us. If it comes not 
sooner, it comes later. W!e are bound to be active and not passive, 
if we wish to lead the true Christian's life. It is given to each one 
of us either to reject or to accept Christ. This alone is really 
what life amounts to. One can manage to be a man or a woman 
committing no murder, not molesting a fellow-creature, and pass- 
ing through life in a negatively decent manner. This is what ani- 
mals do. A hen will take care of its chickens ; even a wild beast 
will protect its young. Dogs at times can be more faithful than 
human beings. This we acknowledge. God has made them so. 
But do we not remember that we have dominion over all of these? 
'Are ye not better than they?' (St. Matthew vi. verse 26). Do 
we not remember that more is expected of us because we are rays 
of the Eternal Light? It is not a case of being a superior sort of 
animal in God's creation: it is a case of being a Christian, a fol- 
lower of Christ. Here we have the crucial point. In life it is the 
motive which counts with God. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 381 

Peter's confession expressed a fuller and deeper faith in their 
Lord's Divinity on the part of himself and the other Apostles than 
they had reached hitherto. They were in a position now to re- 
ceive the trying and disturbing revelation of what awaited their 
Lord in the immediate future. 

St. Matthew xvi. verses 21-25 '■ 'From that time forth began 
Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jeru- 
salem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then 
Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from 
thee. Lord : this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said 
unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan : thou art an offence unto 
me : for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those 
that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples. If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, 
and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it : and 
Vv'hosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. 

Evidently the Apostles still hankered after the old way they had 
expected the victory of the Messiah to come. They had still to be 
taught the difficult lesson that their Lord's victory must come 
through suffering and apparent failure and death. Their Lord 
also taught them the further lesson following out of this, that, as 
their Lord suffered and conquered, so they too must suffer and 
conquer in their turn. From this time forth our Lord went on 
with His teaching, which the Apostles evidently found most dif- 
ficult to accept and assimilate. Yet one day the disciples were to 
follow their Lord's example in a life of suffering and service. 

St. Matthew xx. verse 28: 'Even as the Son of man came not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many.' 

Six days after Peter's confession came the great event of the 
Transfiguration. Not till they had fully perceived and confessed 
His Messiahship, and been made to understand the nature of the 
victory He was to win, were even the chosen three fitted for the 
experience of beholding Him in His glory. 

St. Mark ix. verse 2-8 : 'And after six days Jesus taketh with 
him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high 
mountain apart by themselves : and he was transfigured before 
them. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; 
so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto 
them Elias with Moses : and they were talking with Jesus. And 
Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to 
be here : and let us make three tabernacles ; one for thee, and one 



382 'ALL HAIL' 

for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not what to say; for 
they were sore afraid. And there was a cloud that overshadowed 
them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying. This is my be- 
loved Son: hear him. And suddenly, when they had looked round 
about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with them- 
selves.' 

Peter, to whom this account in St. Mark's Gospel may be at- 
tributed, was one of the three eye-witnesses, and records this fact 
in his Second Epistle i. verses 16-18: 'For we have not followed 
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-wit- 
nesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father hon- 
our and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the 
excellent glory. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when 
we were with him in the holy mount.' 

In this passage St. Peter describes the sight of the Transfigura- 
tion of Christ as the sight of His Majesty. This was a sacramental 
beginning of the Revelation of Christ as God. The Glory which 
shone from His Person and transfigured even His clothing was the 
glory of the Godhead made visible, and was intended to enlighten 
the minds of those who saw it. He shone forth on this occasion 
visibly to bodily eyes as God Who was manifested in the flesh in 
His daily life of self-sacrifice to spiritual eyes. The Transfigura- 
tion, then, may be described as the perfect Godhead shining through 
the perfect Manhood, and glorifying it. 

The 'high mountain' on which the Transfiguration took place is 
evidently part of the Hermon range — either Mount Tabor, one of 
the spurs, or even Hermon itself. The Transfiguration may be 
regarded as a foreshadowing of the glory of the risen Christ after 
His resurrection. It was in the same Body that was transfigured 
on the Holy Mount that He afterwards appeared repeatedly in His 
Majesty to the same disciples who had seen Him there. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

1'he Gospels (From Galilee to Jerusalem — The H ome at 
Bethany — The Feast of Tabernacles — First Teaching in 
the Temple — The Ministry in Per^a — The Feast of the 
Dedication at Jerusalem — Return to Per^a — Visit to 
Bethany to raise Lazarus from the Dead — Withdrawal 
TO Ephraim). 

For the portion of our Lord's ministry which we are now about 
to consider, the chief authorities are St. John and St. Luke. St. 
John is occupied with our Lord's visits at Jerusalem. St. Luke 
supplies the record of what took place before, during, and after 
the journeys to Jerusalem. St. Luke's account gives the ministry 
in Persea, the land beyond Jordan; St. John's, the ministry in Ju- 
dcca. The six or seven months between the Feast of the Pass- 
over and the Feast of Tabernacles are briefly mentioned by St. 
John in the seventh chapter. This, of course, is because St. John 
did not purpose to deal with the Galilean ministry, sufficiently dealt 
with before in the other Gospels. 

St. John vii. verses i, 2 : 'After these things Jesus walked in 
Galilee ; for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought 
to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand.' 

The Feast of Tabernacles is described by Josephus as the holiest 
and greatest among the festivals of the Jews. It fell in October, 
and Christ's visit may be dated 28 a.d. The Feast of Tabernacles 
commemorated the first possession of Canaan. It also gave the 
people an opportunity of showing their gratitude to God for the 
harvest. The pilgrims from Galilee had to start some time be- 
forehand, not only allowing time for the journey, but also for the 
preparations, which, especially for this feast, were considerable; 
booths having to be constructed in which to live during the fes- 
tival, in memory of the nation's wanderings in the wilderness. 

The road which Christ took from Galilee was the direct road 
through Samaria, whereas the Galilean pilgrims generally took the 
road through Peraea, in order to avoid the hated land of the Sa- 
maritans. 

St. Luke ix. verses 51-56: 'And it came to pass, when the time 
was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face 

383 



384 'ALL HAIL' 

to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they 
went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready 
for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as 
though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples, James 
and John, saw this, they said. Lord, wilt thou that we command 
fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias 
did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come 
to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to an- 
other village.' 

Here we have an incident which reveals to us the natural char- 
acter of the sons of Zebedee, and why they were called 'the sons 
of thunder.' They may have been thinking of the appearance oi 
Elijah in the Mount of Transfiguration, and they certainly did not 
realise the difference between the spirit of Elijah and the spirit 
of Christ. Our Lord's action and words condemn religious intol- 
erance in the most unmistakable way. Instead of punishing the 
Samaritans for this refusal of hospitality, our Lord led His disci- 
ples into Jewish territory to another village. The refusal of the 
Samaritans of course was due to the fact that our Lord was going 
up to the feast at Jerusalem, the rival centre of worship. One of 
the incidents of this journey to Jerusalem is worth recording. 
A certain scribe came to Jesus and said: 'Master, I will follow 
thee whithersoever thou goest' (St. Luke ix. verse 57). This 
shows a remarkable enthusiasm in one of the scribes, who, with 
the Pharisees, ranked among the bitterest opponents of Jesus. De- 
votion at this time counted for much, for most of our Lord's fol- 
lowers had withdrawn from Him, and He was going now towards 
an end which, by His own prediction, was to be suffering and death. 

It seems to have been on this same journey that He called a 
man to follow Him — that is, to be His disciple — who asked to be 
allowed to go and bury his father, thereby practically renouncing 
the call. The burial, mourning, and the subsequent purification 
would have occupied many days. What our Lord wanted was 
prompt and absolute devotion; He discouraged all shallow and 
hasty adherence. He wished men to count the cost before they 
made the great decision. Another who wished to follow Christ 
asked leave to go first to bid farewell to those at home. 

St. Luke ix. verse 62: 'And Jesus said unto him. No man, 
having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the 
kingdom of God.' 

It is extremely difficult to arrange in chronological order the 
incidents of this journey, during which, according to St. Luke, the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 385 

question put by a certain lawyer, what he was to do to inherit 
eternal life, led to one of the greatest of our Lord's parables — 
namely, the one of the Good Samaritan. 

St. Luke X. verses 25-37: 'And, behold, a certain lawyer stood 
up, and tempted him', saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit 
eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how 
readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
strength, and with all thy mind ; and thy neighbour as thyself. 
And he said unto him. Thou hast answered right; this do, and 
thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Je- 
sus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering, said, A 
certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, 
and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came 
down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed 
by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the 
place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. 
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: 
and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to 
him', and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set 
him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care 
of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two 
pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care 
of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I 
will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was 
neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, 
He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him. Go, 
and do thou likewise.' 

This ranks as one of the most beautiful of our Lord's parables; 
so simple that a child can understand it; so deep in its teachings 
that it remains unexhausted to-day, with a yet fuller message for 
men of the twentieth century than it had for men of the first. 
Our Lord draws a picture of a poor man stripped by thieves and 
left for dead: a poor wounded man lying forsaken at the road- 
side in a very lonely place. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho 
begins at once to descend, and continues to descend all the way. 
You feel as if falling into an abyss; the atmosphere becomes very 
trying and most oppressive, for Jericho is 1300 feet below the sea- 
level. It is lonely here in the extreme; bare rocks and mountain 
gorges alternate with far-stretching tracts of wild land, affording 
scant pasturage. An occasional shepherd with his speckled or black 
sheep is the only sight which relieves the monotony. 



Z86 *ALL HAIL' 

Journeying along with my mounted Arab escort to guard me 
from possible Bedouin attacks — which reminded me how little 
changed is Palestine to-day from' what Palestine was at the time 
the parable was spoken — one had no difficulty in giving rein to the 
imagination. The whole scene stood before one as vividly as in 
real life. One saw the poor man abandoned to his fate, passed by 
by the selfish priest and by the Levite, who 'looked at him and 
passed by on the other side.' The inn on this mountain pass still 
goes by the name of 'The Good Samaritan.' A very cheery one- 
eyed host gives one a hearty welcome on arrival. Water is still 
fetched from the well that must have refreshed both man and 
beast in the time of our Lord. 

The parable, in truth, contains many lessons for us. Firstly, 
we are taught the lesson that the mere fact of a man needing 
help constitutes his claim upon us. Our Lord's influence and ex- 
ample is the chief power to enable us to realise this ideal of duty 
to our neighbour. In the contrast between the conduct of the 
Samaritan and the conduct of the priest and the Levite, we are 
shown the contrast between real religion and unreal. It is not 
the religion of the priest and the Levite which is condemned, but 
its unreality; just as it is not the religion of the Samaritan that 
is praised, but its reality. Our Lord had no hesitation in putting 
the religion of the Jews as in itself above that of the Samaritans. 
1"he parable is intended to teach us the great truth that practical 
religion consists in one essential spirit of self-sacrificing love, is- 
suing in devoted service to our fellow-men. But kindred to this, 
and enforcing it most powerfully, is an interpretation which sees 
in the wounded man left half dead by the wayside, humanity pros- 
trated by sin and left unhelped by formal religion represented by 
the priest and Levite, but rescued at last by the loving service 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Chirst. Slightly varied, the same 
interpretation applies with equal felicity when the wounded man is 
taken to the individual man or woman rescued from the death of 
sin and tended into the life of righteousness, which is Salvation, 
by Him who is 'able to save to the uttermost.' 

Immediately after this parable we read in St. Luke that Jesus 
came to a certain village, and from' St. John we know well the 
name. The village in which His journey to the Feast of Taber- 
nacles ended was the village of Bethany, so close to Jerusalem as 
to be almost a suburb. In this village there was a house where 
Jesus was received as a guest by two sisters, Martha and Mary. 
They had probably intimated to the messengers whom Jesus had 
sent on before to make arrangements for the reception of Him- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 387 

self and His disciples, during their stay for the Feast of Taber- 
nacles, that they would receive Jesus, but that His disciples must 
lodge elsewhere. The disciples seemingly went into Jerusalem for 
the festivities, while Jesus stayed at Bethany at Martha's house. 
During this first visit of our Lord to Bethany, Lazarus, the brother 
of the sisters, was evidently absent, doubtless in Jerusalem for the 
festival week. 

The sorry remains of what was once beautiful Bethany are to 
be seen lying half-way up an incline in a sequestered spot, nearly 
two miles from Jerusalem. The very pathway between Jerusalem 
and Bethany which our blessed Saviour must frequently have trod 
can be followed by us to-day. Groups of olive trees, as well as fig 
and almond trees, still grow there, but the date palms are gone 
from which Bethany (house of dates) takes its name. The eyes 
of Jesus must have rested on much the same landscape we admire 
to-day. He, who took such deep pleasure in the natural world 
which our Heavenly Father has prepared and made so beautiful 
for our delight, must often have gained strength and solace in 
contemplation of the beauties of nature on His way. 

Making every allowance for the difference there is in every- 
thing we see in Palestine to-day, one realises, when resting here 
awhile, that the same sun sets in the same place as of yore, and 
everything is holy because it is, and ever will be, associated with 
memories of our Lord. 

The home of Bethany became Christ's other home on earth ; for 
here He felt at ease, and here He was understood. The atmos- 
phere of affection in this household was in harmony with His per- 
sonality. He was with a family who appreciated and loved Him. 

St. Luke gives us a beautiful account of the beginning of the 
friendship with the family of Bethany. 

St. Luke, X. verses 38-42 : 'Now it came to pass, as they went, 
that he entered into a certain village : and a certain woman, named 
Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called 
Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But 
Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and 
said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve 
alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered 
and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled 
about many things : but one thing is needful : and Mary hath 
chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.' 

In a very few words the Bible is able to give us a complete de- 
scription of these two sisters, and the difference of their charac- 
ters. Mary, quiet and intense, so devoted to the person of our 



388 'ALL HAIL' 

Lord, and so enraptured with His teaching that she could think 
of nothing else. Martha, equally anxious to honour the great 
Teacher, but not understanding Him as well as Mary, and think- 
ing to please Him by giving all her energies to the preparation of 
an elaborate entertainment. Jesus would have preferred that the 
simplest food should have been provided, and that Martha should 
have done as Mary did, and listened to His teaching; but He 
recognised Martha's genuine affection, and the gentleness of His 
reproof appears evident in the repetition of her name. 

The feast had been going on for some time before our Lord 
went into Jerusalem from Bethany. 

St. John vii. 14-17: 'Now about the midst of the feast, Jesus 
wenit up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, 
saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? 
Jesus answered them, and said. My doctrine is not mine, but his 
that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.' 

He taught so boldly in the Temple that some of the Jews were 
deeply impressed. St. John vii. verses 25-31: Then said some 
of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill? But, 
lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the 
rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ ? Howbeit we knew 
this man whence he is : but when Christ cometh, no man know- 
eth whence he is. Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, 
saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am : and I am 
not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know 
not. But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me. 
Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, 
because his hour was not yet come. And many of the people be- 
lieved on him, and said. When Christ cometh, will he do more 
miracles than these which this man hath done?' 

Again (verses 37-39) : Tn the last day, that great day of the 
feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him 
come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scrip- 
ture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 
(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him 
should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because 
that Jesus was not yet glorified.)' 

The result of this teaching was a division among the people; 
some inclining to accept Him as the Christ, others objecting that 
He was a Galilean. The officers who had been sent to arrest Him 
came back to the chief priests and Pharisees who had sent them. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 389 

half-convinced themselves, and giving the true reason for their 
failure: 'Never man spake like this man' (verse 46). 

Early in the morning of the next day our Lord returned to the 
Temple. St. John viii. verses 2-1 1: 'And early in the morning 
he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; 
and he sat down and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees 
brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had 
set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was 
taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law com- 
manded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? 
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. 
But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, 
as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, 
he lifted up himself, and said unto them. He that is without sin 
among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped 
down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being 
convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, begin- 
ning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and 
the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up him- 
self, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where 
are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She 
said, No man. Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I con- 
demn thee: go, and sin no more.' 

The great importance of this passage is that it records the only 
instance in which our Lord dealt with a sinful action. We gain 
from this account, and the way in which He dealt with the sin, 
some knowledge of the Divine Tribunal ; a far more searching and 
yet a tenderer tribunal than that of man. The writing on the 
ground, probably in the dust of the Temple court, was no doubt a 
mere mechanical action of writing, and expressed absorption in 
His own thoughts and disregard of His questioners. After the 
sentence of Jesus, He left it to each of the accusers to condemn 
himself, and in that Holy Presence no one dared to assert his own 
innocence. The Scribes and Pharisees were forced to feel that ab- 
stinence from sinful acts did not involve sinlessness of thought 
and purity of heart. The woman was made to feel that even a 
flagrant sinner like herself might repent and hope for forgiveness, 

A long discussion with our Lord's Jewish critics followed, in the 
course of which they accused Him of being a Samaritan, an accusa- 
tion which reminds us of the Parable we have lately been consid- 
ering. This discussion ends with a very important declaration : 
that of our Lord's Divinity. 

St. John viii. verses 56-59: 'Your father Abraham rejoiced to see 



390 'ALL HAIL* 

my da}^: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto 
him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 
Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abra- 
ham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him : but Jesus 
hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst 
of them, and so passed by.' 

Here we have a foreshadowing of the supreme claim of our 
Lord, which brought about His condemnation and Crucifixion. 
The Jews correctly enough interpreted the words : 'Before Abraham 
was, I am,' to be intended as a claim on the part of one whom' 
they looked upon as merely a man, to be God as well as man. 

The ninth chapter of St. John tells of the restoration of sight to 
a man who had been blind since his birth. The mode by which He 
did this is worth recording. St. John ix. verses 6-14: '. . . . he 
spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed 
the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, 
wash in the pool of Siloam (which is, by interpretation, Sent). 
He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The 
neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he 
was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said. 
This is he : others said, He is like him : but he said, I am he. There- 
fore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? He an- 
swered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed 
mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash : 
and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto 
him, Where is he? He said, I know not. They brought to the 
Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. And it was the sabbath 
day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.' 

Why did Jesus use saliva and clay? The reason was that the 
day was the Sabbath, and it was expressly forbidden by the nar- 
row Judaism of the Pharisees to apply saliva to the eyes on the 
Sabbath day. The kneading of the clay on the Sabbath day was 
equally forbidden. It is evident that Jesus deliberately went against 
the rigid traditional view of the Sabbath, and healed the man in this 
way in order to challenge the Pharisee position. 

The little village which to-day still bears the name of Siloam 

exists, as it would appear, very little altered in condition from the 

time of our Saviour. Curious little apertures allow the air to enter 

into the houses, which are built of yellow sandstone, and are mostly 

,^wo-storie4 and always flat-roofed. The place is built in terraces, 

'•^and gives one the impression of having been built in parallel lines 

,,';Mong the hillside across the valley of Hinnom and beyond the tomb 

M-i>i Absalom. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 391 

The blind man was brought up and cross-examined by the Coun- 
cil of the Pharisees as to his healing. He stoutly maintained that 
if this man were not of God, He could do nothing. Then they cast 
him out with contempt from their place of meeting. 

St. John ix. verses 35-38 : 'Jesus heard that they had cast him' out ; 
and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe 
on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he. Lord, that 
I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both 
seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, 
I believe. And he worshipped him.' 

Here we see that it was to this poor blind man who had been 
healed that our Lord revealed the conditions of membership in the 
new society which was to be distinct from Judaism. For the first 
time He offers Himself as the object of faith. He had before this, 
as we have seen, called men to be His followers. He had accepted 
their allegiance. Now for the first time He gave a test of fellow- 
ship : belief in Himself and belief which evidently issues in worship. 

In the tenth chapter we come to a very beautiful allegory in our 
Lord's teaching. It is called Parable in our Authorised Version by 
a mistranslation of the original word, elsewhere translated Proverb. 

St. John X. verses 1-5 : 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that 
entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some 
other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth 
in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him' the porter 
openeth ; and the sheep hear his voice : and he calleth his own sheep 
by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own 
sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they 
know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee 
from him : for they know not the voice of strangers.' 

This allegory was addressed primarily to the Pharisees, who 
claimed to be shepherds of God's flock and fold, and yet were in 
utter blindness as to the Good Shepherd Himself. In the allegory 
Christ sets Himself forth under two figures : as regards the fold, 
He is the Door; as regards the flock. He is the Shepherd. Our 
Lord explains the allegory Himself, so there is no need for any 
explanation of ours. 

St. John x. 7-16: 'Then said Jesus unto them. Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came 
before me are thieves and robbers : but the sheep did not hear them. 
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and 
shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but 
for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy : I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am 



392 'ALL HAIL' 

the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 
But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own 
the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and 
fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The 
hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the 
sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known 
of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: 
and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, 
which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall 
hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.' 

The last words of this passage contain a most deplorable mis- 
translation; the words are: 'and there shall be one fold and one 
shepherd.' The word fold means really Hock, and the importance of 
the change is obvious. 

At the end of the explanation of this allegory, which, we may 
observe, is a New Testament version of the twenty-third Psalm, our 
Lord predicted publicly and plainly H'is own Death and His own 
Resurrection. The immediate result of His teaching may be given 
in the words of St. John x. verses 19-21 : 'There was a division 
therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. And many of 
them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? Others 
said. These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a 
devil open the eyes of the blind?' 

Immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus retired into 
Persea, where John the Baptist had preached, and where He Him- 
self had been baptized. A great change had taken place since then. 
The leaders of the people, the Scribes and Pharises, were now bit- 
terly opposed to Jesus, yet on the other hand there was a much 
fuller knowledge of Jesus, of His wondrous works, and of H'is 
preaching. Hitherto He had preached in Galilee and in Jerusalem; 
He now gave some months to a ministry in Peraea. The people 
tliere had not had time to forget the impressive call to repentance 
given by John the Baptist, so that in a very real sense they were pre- 
pared to hear and understand Christ. His Peraean ministry lasted 
about six months, and was divided into two parts — the first from 
after the Feast of Tabernacles, the end of September or beginning 
of October, to the month of December, when He came to Jerusalem 
to the Feast of Dedication; the second part from the close of the 
Feast of the Dedication to the beginning of April, with an interval 
for a short visit to Bethany to raise up Lazarus from the dead. 
The account of this ministry in Persea is supplied chieAy by St. 
Luke, chapter xix., with the exception of a passage in the twelfth 
chapter of St. Matthew, and short references in St. Mark x. i, St. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 393 

Matthew xix. i, St. John x. 40. St. Luke's account contains bMt. 
little narrative of events, consisting mainly of discourses and par- 
ables. Just as the beginning of the Galilean ministry had bet\i 
marked by discourses and parables, so was the beginning of the 
Peraean. The first thing to notice in the Peraean ministry, accordir^ 
to St. Luke, is the account of our Lord casting out a devil, and 
the dispute which followed, evidently with the Pharisees, v/ho 
accused Jesus for casting out devils by Beelzebub. This charzc 
was met by our Lord by showing its unreasonableness in a shori 
but convincing argument. Then we read, in St. Luke xi. verse 3;^ 
that a certain Pharisee asked Him to breakfast, and wondered that 
He had not first gone through the requisite ceremonial washing 
before eating. Thereupon our Lord delivered the last discourse 
directly addressed to the Pharisees recorded in St. Luke. This is 
another step in the attack on the Pharisees' position, which was de- 
veloped during His Peraean ministry. The result of this attack v.e 
are told in St. Luke xi. verses 53, 54: 'And as he said these thir-gb 
unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him 
vehemently, and to provoke hirn to speak of many things: layiri^ 
wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his m'ou;!.. 
that they might accuse him.' 

After this a great multitude of people gathered to hear Him, a:id 
the crowd v/as so great that they trod one upon another. One of 
them asked Him to speak to his brother, and make him divide the 
inheritance. 

St. Luke xii. verses 15-21 : 'And he said unto them, Take heed, atnl 
beware of covetousness : for a man's life consisteth not in t!ie 
abundance of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a pcT- 
able unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man broug'it 
forth plentifully : and he thought within himself, saying, What sIi?Jl 
I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And h-.: 
said. This will I do : I will pull down my barns, and build greater; 
and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say 
to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; take 
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou 
fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee : then whose shall 
those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up 
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.' 

This is the first of the series of the wonderful Parables which 
distinguish His Peraean ministry. The next event recorded by St. 
Luke took place on this wise. Our Lord was teaching in one of 
the synagogues on the Sabbath. 

St. Luke xiii. 11- 17: 'And, behold, there was a woman which had 



394 'ALL HAIL' 

a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and 
rould in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he 
called her to him, and said unto her, Woman thou art loosed from 
ihine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she 
was made straight and glorified God. And the ruler of the syna- 
j:ogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on 
the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in 
^vhich men ought to work: in them therefore coine and be healed, 
and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and 
raid, Thou hyprocrite ! doth not each one of you on the sabbath 
loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to water- 
ing? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, 
whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from 
this bond on the Sabbath day? And when he had said these things, 
all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for 
all the glorious things that were done by him.' 

In St. Luke we read, after a graphic characterisation of Herod 
as 'that fox/ a touching lament for Jerusalem. 

St. Luke xiii. 31-34: The same day there came certain of the 
Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence : for 
Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that 
fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, 
and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk 
to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be 
that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee ; 
how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen 
doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!' 

About two months had passed since Jesus left Jerusalem for Peraea 
at the close of the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was December when 
Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Dedication. This 
feast was not a Biblical institution. It had been instituted by Judas 
Maccabceus when the Temple, desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes, 
was solemnly purified and dedicated again to the service of God by 
that devout patriot. The festival was also called the Lights. The 
illumination of the Temple and also the illumination of private houses 
were salient characteristics of this feast. Thus the illumination was 
universal, and a close connection was established between the cus- 
tom and the religious life of the nation and the life of the family and 
the individual. Here is a lesson for us. As the Temple had to be 
kept purified and well lighted, so too the family life, as well as the 
individual life, requires care and attention. Our Lord's teaching 
shows that the outward life is intimately associated with the inner 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 305 

life of man. The outward life is intended to be sacramental, iv.i 
outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. 

In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord calls His followers 'the 
light of the world.' In St. John ix. verse 5, He calls Himself 'the 
Light of the world.' We can only be the light of the world if we 
receive light from Him, the central light: the Sun of the spiritual 
world. As the planets' light is borrowed, so is ours. The inward 
heat of pure love is the life-giving light of our Spiritual Sun. 

We turn to St. John for an account of what took place at this 
feast. 

St. John X. verses 22-24: 'And it was at Jerusalem the feast of 
the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple 
in Solomon's porch. Then came the Jews round about him, ?.:k1 
said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? It thou be 
the Christ, tell us plainly.' 

The answer of our Lord was a test of faith. Though He was 
the Christ of the Old Testament, He was by no means the Chr'st 
the Pharisees hoped for (verse 25) : 'Jesus answered them; I to'd 
you, and ye believed not : the works that I do in my Father's name, 
they bear witness of me.' 

That is to say, even if they could not yet understand His teaclr""!g, 
His mighty works were there to interpret it. The miracles v,ere 
full confirmation for the teaching. The Jews were answered fin ally 
by the great declaration of Christ's Oneness of Essence with Go:l: 
'I and my Father are one' (verse 30). 'One' is neuter, i.e., one es- 
sence, not one person. 

St. John X. verses 31, 32: 'Then the Jews took up stones aaai". 
to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works ha^ -^ I 
shewed you from my Father ; for which of those works do ye stone 
me?' 

The pathetic irony of His answer was calculated to appeal to ?,'^y 
lingering spark of justice in His hearers' hearts. Our Lord finished 
His address on this occasion by a final appeal. St. John x. verses 
S7, 38: 'If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if 
I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works : that ye may 
know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.' 

Our Lord's words seem to have had some slight eifect, for there 
was no further attempt to stone Him ; but they tried to arrest Him, 
-though, overawed by His personal majesty, they let Him go forth 
out of their hands. 

After this escape from His enemies, our Lord left Jerusalem. St. 
John x. verse 40: 'And went away again beyond Jordan into the 
place where John at first baptized ; and there he abode.' 



396 'ALL HAIL' 

Here in Peraea the people seem to have been simpler-minded and 
warmer-hearted, and many of them believed on Him. Perhaps also 
the unforgotten attraction and influence of the Baptist's preaching 
contributed to this result. The time between this journey and the 
last entry into Jerusalem falls naturally into two parts, divided 
by the journey to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead. To the 
■irst of these two periods belong a number of Parables which it is 
impossible to arrange with certainty in chronological order; the 
same difficulty meets us in the arrangement of the discourses and 
events. These Peraean parables differ from the Galilean parables, 
which required explanation, in being easy to be understood by all our 
Lord's hearers. They bring the Good News, the Gospel, to the lost. 
The Divine compassion runs through them, and reaches its highest 
manifestation in the parables recorded in the fifteenth chapter of 
St. Luke. 

To understand these parables we must understand the circum- 
stances, and they are set forth in the first verses of this chapter. 

St. Luke XV. verses i, 2 : 'Then drew near unto him all the pub- 
licans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes 
murmured, saying. This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with 
them'.' 

The Jews held that works of penitence were required before God 
would receive the penitent. But Christ taught that God had come 
in Him to seek and save those that were lost, not waiting for re- 
pentence and amendment on their part. The murmuring of the 
Pharisees and Scribes against our Lord's attitude towards sinners 
was the immediate cause of the parables, which show that Christ's 
attitude is exactly God's attitude. All these parables enforce this 
view. The work of the Father and the work of the Son is regarded 
as the same, and that work is the restoration of the lost. Christ 
has come to do the work, and the Father longs to welcome tlie wan- 
derers home again. The first of these parables is the Parable of the 
Lost Sheep. This parable, like the next, the Lost Coin, is addressed 
directly to the Pharisees. 'What man of you having an hundred 
sheep,' says Christ, just as He had addressed the Pharisees in a 
recent discussion on the Sabbath, 'Which of you shall have an ass or 
an ox fallen into a pit' (St. Luke xiv. verse S). 

The last parable, that of the Prodigal Son, is not like the other 
two, a defence of our Lord's action, but a revelation of the reason 
of His action, that He was doing literally the work of His Father. 
The essence of the first two parables is the same, the seeking of the 
Saviour until He finds and rescues the lost, and the joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. The 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 397 

parable of the Prodigal Son is the crown, not only ot these three 
parables, but of our Lord's whole teaching by parables. It is the 
Gospel in the Gospel, as it has sometimes been called. It is so 
perfect in every detail, and as a whole, that although well known, 
we must quote the main portion of it here. 

St. Luke XV. verse ii : '. . . . A certain man had two sons: 
and the younger of them said to his father, Father^ give me the 
portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his 
living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all 
together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted 
his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there 
arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 
And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and 
he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have 
filled his belly with the husks (i.e., carob-tree pods) that the swine 
did eat : and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, 
he said. How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough 
and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my 
father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, 
and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make 
me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his 
father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him. 
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed 
him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against 
heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy 
son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the bes^ 
robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes or! 
his feet : and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, 
and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he 
was lost, and is found.' 

The meanings of this parable are manifold, but we can only in- 
dicate a few. God is our home : when we love God, we love home. 
The far country into which we go is forgetfulness of God, as St. 
Augustine interprets it. When the prodigal came to himself, he at 
once thought of his father. The prodigal, of course, represents man- 
kind, and in every man there is a true self which, stifled though it 
may be by years of sin, still lives, and can be reached by the 
Saviour's appeal. To be a true Christian is to fully possess this 
trus self, as the ruling part of one's being. 

From the teaching of Christ at this period, we turn now to His 
works. We open St. John's Gospel, and read the whole of his 
beautiful account of the raising of Lazarus, which is the climax 
in the miracles of our Lord. It is not only the miracles of miracles, 



398 * ALL HAIL' 

as the Prodigal Son was the parable of parables, but, unlike the 
miracles in Galilee, it is very fully attested. It took place quite 
close to Jerusalem, and in the presence of numbers of spectators, 
many of them hostile to Christ and some of them' converted by what 
they saw. It has been well said, if this miracle be true all are 
true; for to raise the four days' dead was an exercise of manifestly 
supernatural power. The great thinker, Spinoza, said, that if he 
could accept this miracle, he would humbly accept Christianity. 

We start at chapter xi. verse i, of St. John: 'Now a certain man 
was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her 
sister Martha. 'It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with 
ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus 
was sick.) Therefore his sisters sent unto him' saying, Lord, behold, 
he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This 
sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son 
of God might be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha, and 
her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was 
sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Then 
after that saith he to his disciples. Let us go into Judaea again. His 
disciples say unto him. Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee ; 
and goest thou thither again ? Jesus answered. Are there not twelve 
hours in the day? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, 
because he seeth the light of this world. But if any man walk in 
the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. These 
things said he, and after that he saith unto them, Our friend 
Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. 
Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.' 

What the disciples felt is what we are so thankful for when any- 
body is ill whom we love. After tossing about in feverish restless- 
ness, we are so thankful when calm, beautiful sleep closes the weary 
eyelids of our patient, and brings him relief from aches and pains, 
and enables him to wake up refreshed. 

But Jesus was not speaking of a common sleep. He was referring 
to the death of Lazarus. To the Christian, death is a sleep. Our 
word 'cemetery' means a sleeping-place. We sleep the death-sleep 
here to wake to a better life hereafter. 

St. John xi. verse 14 : 'Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus 
is dead; and I am' glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the 
intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. Then said 
Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples. Let us 
also go, that we may die with him.' 

It is plain that the disciples dreaded this journey which Jesus was 
about to take. To them it seemed a deliberate risk of the danger 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 399 

of death, so bitter was the hostility of the Pharisees. It was just 
as if their Master was going straight into an enemies' camp. 

St. John xi. verse 17: 'Then when Jesus came, he found that Laz- 
arus had lain in the grave for four days already. Now Bethany 
was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off : and many of 
the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning 
their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was 
coming, went and met him; but Mary sat still in the house. The^ 
said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wiit 
ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her. Thy brother 
shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise 
again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I 
am' the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in me, though 
he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him. 
Yea, Lord ; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which 
should come into the world. And when she had so said, she went 
her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master 
is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose 
quickly, and came unto him. Now Jesus was not yet come into the 
town, but was in that place where Martha met him. The Jews 
then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, whe-i 
they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her. 
saying. She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary 
was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, 
saying unto him. Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not 
died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also 
■weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was 
troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, 
Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold, 
how he loved him ! And some of them said. Could not this man, 
which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this 
man should not have died? Jesus therefore, again groaning in him- 
self, Cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 
Jesus said. Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that 
was dead saith unto him. Lord, by this time he stinketh : for he hath 
been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her. Said I not unto thee, that, 
if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ? Then 
they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. 
And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said. Father, I thank thee that 
thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always ; but 
because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe 



400 'ALL HAIL' 

that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with 
a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came 
forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes ; and his face was 
bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them', Loose him,and 
let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had 
seen the thing which Jesus did, believed on him. But some of them 
went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus 
had done.' 

A few words may be said on this marvellous account. It is 
evidently that of an eye-witness, full of vivid touches as well as of 
minute details. Turning to verse 25, Jesus says: 'I am' the resur- 
rection and the life.' That is, resurrection is not a doctrine, but 
a fact, being the personal communication of the Lord Himself to 
believers here and now. He that is in union with Christ has true 
life, in the present and in the future. The permanence of our hu- 
manity is to be found only in our union with Him. 

Turning to verse 33, we read that Jesus 'groaned in the spirit 
and was troubled.' The meaning of this is first perhaps that Jesus 
felt an indignant emotion (which he expressed by a groaning) at 
the dread and horror of death by which those he loved were over- 
come. He regarded death as a peaceful sleep from which there 
was a sure and happy awakening. By His sympathy He felt what 
they felt, and sorrowed to perceive the needless terror of death, by 
which His friends and all mankind were oppressed. A fuller mean- 
ing must not be lost sight of: that in some mysterious way, in 
taking away the sufferings of men. He took them upon Himself. 
'Groaned' may also be transalted with R.M. 'was moved with indig- 
nation' at the power of death. 

Turning to verses 41, 42, we find that our Lord thanked God aloud 
for the great miracle He was about to do. Christ being One with 
God, this prayer was the conscious realisation of God's Will, and 
to a thoughful bystander like St. John, a clear manifestation of His 
Divinity. 

The immediate result of the miracle was that many of the Jews 
believed on Jesus. Some went and told the Pharisees in Jerusalem; 
and the Sadducee chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council. 
This council, the Sanhedrin, met to decide what was to be done. 
The unscrupulous Sadducee high priest, Caiaphas, set forth, pro- 
bably, his own decided policy that Jesus should be put to death, and 
was guided by a mysterious irony to interpret truly, though un- 
consciously, the results of the death of Jesus. 

St. John xi. verses 49-54: 'And one of them, named Caiaphas, 
being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know noth- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 401 

ing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man 
should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. 
And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, 
he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation : and not for 
that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the 
children of God that were scattered abroad. Then from that day 
forth they took counsel together for to put him to death. Jesus 
therefore walked no more openly among the Jews : but went thence 
unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, 
and there continued with his disciples.' 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Gospels (The Last Journey to Jerusalem — At Jericho — 
Zacchaeus — The Home at Bethany — The Messianic Entry 
INTO Jerusalem — The Teaching in the Temple). 

The place to which our Lord retired with His disciples after He 
left the home at Bethany, and the sisters happy in the society of 
their brother restored to life, was called Ephraim. From the notices 
in the Synoptic Gospels, this place seems to have been somewhere 
on the borders of Persea and Galilee. It was not long before He 
set out for His last journey to Jerusalem. He had resolved to go 
up to the Passover, and to offer Himself as the Messiah for the ac- 
ceptance or rejection of the nation. After a short stay in Ephraim, 
he seems to have journeyed along the northern borders of Galilee, 
perhaps in order to enable His disciples to visit their friends ; per- 
haps also to enable the disciples from Galilee to join Him. The 
many women mentioned in St. Mark xv. verses 40, 41, as having 
come up with Him to Jerusalem, must clearly have been with Him 
on this last journey. St. Luke records the first incident by the way 
in chapter xvii. verses 12-19: 'And as he entered into a certain 
village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar 
off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have 
mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them'. Go shew 
yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, 
they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was 
healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell 
down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks : and he was a Sa- 
maritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? 
but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give 
glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him. Arise, go 
thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.' 

It is to this part of the journey that we must assign the teaching 
of our Lord on divorce, which is of a very definite and important 
nature. The duty of Christians is themselves to observe and to 
teach others 'to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you' (St. Matthew xxviii. verse 20). 

The utterance of this important discourse was an answer to ques- 

402 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 403 

tions put by the Pharisees, who perhaps thought that if Christ spoke 
out boldly against divorce in Persea, Herod's territory, the fury of 
Herodias might be aroused against Him, as it had been against 
John the Baptist. They also judged that the popular feeling would 
be against the high and severe views of our Lord; and in this they 
were not far wrong, for the disciples, when they were alone with 
Jesus in the house, expressed their dissatisfaction, and asserted 
that, if Christ's view were to be accepted, it was better for a man 
not to marry at all. But our Lord made no concession, and His 
v/ords on divorce remain binding on all Christians to-day as when 
they were first spoken. 

The historic Churches have, on the whole, adhered to this ideal. 
Experience confirms the wisdom of our Lords' plain prohibition 
of divorce, for such easy customs of divorce have been found to 
mark the decadence of great nations ; for example, the Roman Em- 
pire. 

St. Matthew xix. verses 3-9: 'The Pharisees also came unto him, 
tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put 
away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto 
them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning 
made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man 
leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife : and they 
twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but 
one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man 
put asunder. They say unto him. Why did Moses then command to 
give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith 
unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered 
you to put away your wives : but from the beginning it was not so. 
And I say unto you. Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it 
be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery : and 
whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.' 

After our Lord had given this lofty teaching on marriage in 
answer to the Pharisees, He returned to the house in which He was 
staying; and there the disciples asked Him again of the same 
matter. The teaching was repeated and emphasised. 

It was to this same house that they brought young children that 
He might touch them ; that is, put His hand on them and bless them. 

St. Mark x. verses 13-16: 'And they brought young children to 
him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those 
that brought them'. But when Jesus saw it, he was much dis- 
pleased and said unto them. Suffer the little children to come unto 
me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. 
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of 



404 'ALL HAIL' 

God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them 
up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.' 

The children were no doubt brought by their mothers. But the 
disciples considered it quite beneath the dignity of the Great Teacher 
to occupy Himself with such small things. Our Lord reminded 
His disciples of what He had already taught them, that the King- 
dom of God had to be received as by a little child, in humble trust 
and meek obedience. His folding of the little ones in His arms 
and blessing them has been a perpetual consecration of child-life. 
Childhood He taught thus to be a holy state, as He had taught 
marriage to be a holy state, both to be reverenced and guarded 
against degradation, on pain of the destruction of national as well 
as family life. The consecration of the whole common life of man 
was from the first the destined work of the Gospel. 

In other passages in the Evangelists we have unmistakable teach- 
ings of our Lord revealing the high value and the sacredness of 
childhood. St. Matthew xviii. verses i-6: 'At the same time came 
the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom 
of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him 
in the midst of them, and saia, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be 
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefor shall humble himself as 
this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And 
whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. 
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in 
me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his 
neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' 

Little had His disciples dreamt of the answer that Christ gave to 
them: the greatest in the kingdom of heaven was to be like a little 
child. Indeed, the child-character is declared to be essential for 
membership in the kingdom of heaven. The self-seeking, ambitious 
spirit, which had dictated the disciples' question, must be put away. 
The humble, trustful spirit of a little child must take its place. 
Talking about children, it is encouraging to think that we have 
the example of a perfect boy in our Saviour, and know how good, 
and true, and obedient He was in His early days. He asks children 
to be like Him, as He was when a sinless child. One of the most 
remarkable things about our Saviour is that whatever He asks us 
to attempt, He has Himself already accomplished, and thus shown 
us the way to success. 'Whosoever shall offend' means cause to 
offend or cause to stumble, aand the whole passage we have just now 
read is a tremendous warning against leading astray a child, or a 
simple child-like Christian — either wilfully or by neglect. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 405 

The next incident which meets us in this record of the last days 
in Peraea, is the story of the young ruler who came running in his 
eagerness, and kneeling, asked Christ: 'Good Master, what shall 
I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why 
callest thou me good? there is none good, but one, that is God. 
Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not 
kill. Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour 
thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him. 
Master, all these have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus 
beholding him loved him, and said unto him', One thing thou 
lackest : go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, 
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the 
cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went 
away grieved: for he had great possessions' (St. Mark x. verses 
17-22). .Dante calls this 'The Great Refusal.' 

The strangeness of the address, 'Good Master,' from Jewish lips, 
suggests the meaning of our Lord's inquiry :'Why callest thou me 
good? there is none good save one, that is God.' The Lord seems 
to ask : Why do you kneel down and address me as good, an epithet 
belonging to God? Do you realise that if I deserve to be called 
good, I must be one with God? 

This young man was serious and earnest, and had done his best 
to live up to his light, and Jesus looking intently upon him", loved 
him, and called him to the highest honour He could bestow upon 
him: to take his place, like Matthew, at his Master's side. But 
Jesus saw that there was one obstacle to prevent this young man 
following Him as His disciple. He had great wealth, and he loved 
his possessions. Till his heart was set on Christ alone, he could not 
really be His disciple. Christ had already repeatedly laid down the 
conditions of discipleship. St. Luke xiv. verse 33: '. . . . who- 
soever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot, 
be my disciple.' The event justified our Lord's insight into the 
human heart. 

Therefore our Lord told the young man to get rid at once of the 
obstacle, to give away the wealth on which his heart was set, and 
to give his heart to Christ and His service. It is evident from this 
that the command has no application to Christians generally, but 
only to those whose wealth draws their hearts away from' Christ. 
The willing surrender of the heart to Christ is the essential thing 
He requires in a disciple. A disciple may possess and administer 
wealth blamelessly, provided wealth does not possess his heart. 
Nevertheless, our Lord goes on to teach His disciples that there 
is a real danger to be guarded against — the danger that a man 



4o6 ' ALL HAIL ' 

should learn to trust in riches, and so cease to trust in God. 

Before he left Persea on the last journey to Jerusalem, our Lord 
predicted to His Apostles the approaching end. They were on the 
way when He told them, saying : 'Behold, we go up to Jerusalem ; 
and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and 
unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall 
deliver him to the Gentiles; and they shall mock him, and shall 
scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him : and the 
third day he shall rise again' (St. Mark x. verses 33, 34). 

St. Mark tells us they were amazed and afraid, and it is evident 
from what followed later, that they did not really understand Him. 
And now our Lord passed for the last time the fords of Jordan, 
leaving Persea and Galilee behind, and setting His face towards 
Jerusalem, where the last great sacrifice of a life of self-sacrifice 
was to be offered up by Him. He came on this occasion openly, not 
as a private man as at the feast of Tabernacles, but as a Leader 
at the head of His disciples. 

Jericho, about six miles from Jordan, was the first city our Lord 
and His band of followers approached, by the main caravan road 
from Arabia and Damascus. The fame of the great Prophet of 
Nazareth must have been particularly well known in Jericho: not 
only must they have heard of the wondrous works He had done in 
Galilee and Peraea, but the greatest of His works had shortly before 
been performed at no considerable distance, at the village of 
Bethany. They knew at Jericho of His raising of Lazarus from the 
dead, and they knew also that the Sanhedrin was bitterly opposed 
to Him and had resolved on His death. The news that Jesus was 
coming had spread before Him, and long before the band of pil- 
grims to the Passover, who accompanied Jesus, came in sight of 
Jericho, the inhabitants had come out to see the great Prophet. A 
crowd lined the road, and among them but in a tree, above the head 
of the others, the chief of the publicans (i.e. head of the Customs' 
collectors at Jericho) was waiting. 

St. Luke xix. verses i-io: 'And Jesus entered and passed through 
Jericho. And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which 
was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought 
to see Jesus, who he was; and could not for the press, because he 
was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a 
sycamore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when 
Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto 
him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must 
abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and re- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 407 

ceived him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, 
saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. 
And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord ; Behold, Lord, the half 
of my goods I give to the poor : and if I have taken any thing 
from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And 
Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, for- 
somuch as he also is a son of Abraham, For the Son of man is 
come to seek and to save that which was lost' 

All that Zacchseus had hoped when he climbed the sycamore tree 
was to see Jesus as He passed by; he could not have dreamed that 
the great Prophet would take any notice of a despised publican. 
But as Jesus, at the head of His Apostles, passed underneath the 
overhanging branches of the sycamore. He looked up and their 
eyes met in the shock of recognition, and with the infinite gracious- 
ness of a King, Jesus invited himself to be a guest at the house 
of Zacchaeus. It was as though Jesus had come to Jericho for 
this very purpose. Overwhelmed with joy, Zacchaeus made haste 
and came down, and received Jesus in his house. The favour shown 
to the publican moved the crowd to indignation. They all mur- 
mured at the great Prophet's action in coming as a guest to a man 
who was a sinner. Their indignation may have spurred the generous 
desire of Zacchaeus to show himself worthy of the great honour done 
to him ; at any rate, he stood forth before the indignant crowd, and, 
addressing himself to Jesus, declared his decision to live a new life. 
He gave half of his wealth to the poor from that hour ; and he 
offered to any one from whom he had extorted money, to restore 
it fourfold. He had worshipped money in the past. For the future 
he sacrificed everything to live so that Jesus might approve of his 
life ; and Jesus, who read his heart, declared the reality of his 
salvation. He had been one of the lost. Now he was one of the 
saved, 'for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which 
v/as lost' (verse 10). 

This illuminating glimpse into the house of Zacchaeeus is all we 
are given. But we can guess with what joy the sinner, who had 
been lifted into the higher life by the Divine Friendship of our 
Lord, sat that night, like Mary, at his Heavenly Guest's feet and 
heard His word. 

Next morning Jesus resumed His journey to Jerusalem; but as 
he left Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, 
'blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timseus, sat by the highway side, 
begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he 
began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy 
on me. x\nd many charged him that he should hold his peace: 



4o8 'ALL HAIL' 

but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy 
on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. 
And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good com- 
fort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, 
and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What 
wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto 
him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto 
him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immedi- 
ately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way' (St. 
Mark x. verses 46-62). 

The effort made to induce the blind man to hold his peace came 
without doubt from our Lord's disciples, and for a very weighty 
reason. Jesus had not yet made a public claim to the Messiahship, 
though since Peter's confession the Twelve Apostles at any rate 
knew that their Master was the Messiah, but He had charged them 
not to make this known. Here was Bartimseus crying out : 'Thou 
Son of David, have mercy on me.' This name, 'Son of David,' 
was well known to mean the Messiah. Jesus, however, was going 
up to Jerusalem for the purpose of offering Himself to the na- 
tion's acceptance as the Messiah, and He was not afraid of the 
blind man's confession. So He called him and healed him. Bar- 
timaeus has a lesson for us. He knew what he wanted, and he had 
faith that Christ could supply it, and by persistency he obtained 
the deliverance he desired. There are many of us in as great a 
need of spiritual sight as Bartimaeus was of physical. We can ob- 
it, if we seek it with the same faith and from the same Source. 

After He left Jericho, our Lord travelled to Bethany, and there 
He stayed, as before, with Martha and Mary. He arrived there 
six days before the Passover. The result of His presence at Beth- 
any was that a great number of people from Jerusalem came out, 
not only to see Him, but to see Lazarus, whom He had raised from 
the dead. Many of them, we learn from St. John, before they 
went away believed on Jesus, that is to say, accepted Him as the 
Messiah. The Sadducee chief priests, on hearing of this, con- 
sulted together how they might put Lazarus as well as Jesus to 
death; thus to remove the living proof of the great miracle as well 
as the Worker of it. While this plot was being hatched at Je- 
rusalem, Jesus was resting in the peace and quiet of the happy 
home at Bethany. The atmosphere of love and devotion there must 
have been comforting and helpful to our Lord's human nature, 
sorely tried by the bitter hatred of the leaders of His own nation, 
whom the proof of His divine power and His divine goodness 
merely served to exasperate against Him. It seems evry fitting 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 409 

that our Lord's last home on earth should have been the house of 
friendship, the home at Bethany. The spirit that holds together 
the home-life is the spirit that holds together the life of the larger 
family — the Church, Without the spirit of friendship to bind to- 
gether its members, the true life of the family is not possible. 
Friendship is essential to right relations between husbands and 
wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and even mas- 
ters and servants. Our Lord's consecration of human life by 
making the spirit of home the spirit of His New Society, 'Hence- 
forth I call you not servants, but I have called you 

friends' (St. John xv. verse 15), reminds us that the felt presence 
of Christ was intended to give the standard of life in the Christian 
home as well as in the Christian Church. What would Christ have 
us to do? This is the standard of conduct in all situations of life. 
Anything which tends to loosen the ties of home-life is hostile to 
the ideal put before us by Christ's example. The disuse of such 
simple practices as grace before meals has a bad influence, more 
serious and more far-reaching than is generally supposed. The 
needless abandonment of the life of the family circle for the life 
of the hotel and the restaurant has the same effect, and ultimately 
issues in the disintegration of the life of the community. 

We return to the home of Bethany. Jesus arrived on the Friday. 
The next day was the Sabbath. And they made Him a supper. 
Here we may look at our picture on hospitality. The supper was 
not at the house of Martha, but at the house of Simon the Leper, 
a man who no doubt had been healed by Jesus, and who gave his 
guest-chamber for the supper with grateful love. Martha man- 
aged the service of the meal, and Lazarus was one of the guests. 
Martha's sister was also present. St. John xii. verse 3 : 'Then 
took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and 
anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and 
the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.' This touch 
is unmistakably that of an eye-witness. 

St. Matthew, with whose account should be read that of St. John, 
records the fact that Mary first anointed the head of Jesus as He 
reclined at table, no doubt before she anointed the feet, which was 
a very unusual thing, an expression of deepest veneration. St. 
Matthew also records the fact that the pound of spikenard was 
in an 'alabaster,' a cylindrical flask made of this stone, likened by 
a Roman writer to a closed rosebud. Genuine spikenard, as the 
words of the original Greek may best be rendered, is a very pre- 
cious perfume of the consistency of ointment. It was worth a large 
sum, nearly 9/. Mary had kept this precious possession against 



410 'ALL HAIL' 

the day of her Lord's burial, and we may gather from her action 
that He had told her plainly that the end was at hand, and that 
He was to die that very week. 

The indignant objection of Judas Iscariot, which actually suc- 
ceeded in carrying away some of the other disciples, drew from our 
Lord a defence of her action which is full of pathos. The love 
which was the master-passion of Mary's soul gains by contrast 
with the covetousness which ruled the mind of Judas. But that He, 
who for our sakes came down from heaven, should have had to 
plead for the last service of love, is touching, and in keeping with 
all the sorow and suffering our Lord had soon to bear. 

Before we come to the next step in our Lord's progress towards 
the end of His ministry and His life, the entry into Jerusalem as 
the Messianic King, we maj'^ with advantage endeavour to realise 
a picture of Jerusalem as it is to-day, to help us to see with the 
mJnd's eye Jerusalem as it was then. We have read in our Old 
Testament of the building of Solomon's magnificent Temple, and 
of its destruction by the Chaldseans in the reign of Nebuchadnez- 
zar. The Temple which was built by the exiles, after the return 
from Babylon, was inferior to Solomon's Temple, and was alto- 
gether surpassed by the Temple of Herod, begun in the year 20 
B.C. At the time of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, Herod's Tem- 
ple had been forty and six years in building, and was not finished 
for about thirty years after. The site of the Temple is a very 
beautiful one ; it is also a very ancient one. Psalm xlviii. verse 2 : 
'Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, 
on the sides of the north, the city of the great King, Not only 
had Solomon's Temple, Zerubbabel's Temple, and Herod's Tem- 
ple stood there, but earlier still David built an altar there and of- 
fered sacrifices. 2 Samuel xxiv. verse 25 : 'And David built there 
an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace of- 
ferings. So the Lord was intreated for the land, and the plague 
was stayed from Israel.' 

The Mosque of Omar which still stands above the sacred rock 
is called by the name of Khalif Omar, who took Jerusalem from 
the Christians in 637 a.d. and built a wooden mosque. Abdel-Melek, 
the sixteenth Khalif, erected a Kubbeh, or dome, over the sacred 
rock in 688 a.d. This was the original of the present building. 
Instead of a pavement, the original bare rock floors the centre of 
this building. The rock is railed off as being too holy to be trod- 
den by the foot of man. Everything is of the best : priceless Per- 
sian tiles adorn the exterior. The result is truly beautiful as well 
as poetic. Out of the crevices of the stonework yellow-eyed hys- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 411 

sop peeps, and clothes with beauty brick, and stone, and marble. 
Doves in large numbers build their nests in between work of in- 
describable beauty. The interior abounds with different and ex- 
quisite kinds of wood, of marble, of stained-glass windows. 
Around this building lies the Temple area : a scene of a variety 
and a beauty that baffles description. The ground you walk on is 
in part flagged ; in part it is green grass diversified with many- 
coloured flowers. Under the silvery leafage of the olive trees oc- 
casional groups in Eastern garb met the eye. Moslems are freely 
admitted, at any and at all times. Christians, who here indeed are 
made to feel as if they were aliens, are only admitted when they 
have procured an order from their embassy. 

In the Temple precincts there are several wells, whence I saw 
men filling their skins. Little Arab cihldren were lying about 
among the scarlet anemones which here abound. The walls of the 
Temple area are partly in ruins, but the gates are still to be seen. 
There is a wonderful view, full of the memories of that unparalleled 
history. Just outside the outer walls are the tombs of the Hebrew 
kings. The Valley of Hinnom lies deep below. The Brook of 
Kidron flows hard by. The village of Siloam which we have been 
speaking about is to be seen on the opposite hillside. As a back- 
ground to everj'thing rise the hills, brilliant in green in the spring- 
time. The nearest is the range known as the Mount of Olives. 
The quietness here is profound. You seem to hear the stillness in 
that sort of day-dream which one experiences when one is taken 
out of oneself by the realised nearness of persons and scenes of the 
mighty past. 

From this very place Christ had often gazed on the same view. 
It is an unforgettable experience to realise this truth. Moving to 
the Mount of Olives, the view changes : undulating hill ranges, fold 
within fold, one gently melting into another, form a continuous but 
ever-changing panorama of surprises, as the clouds from above send 
down light or shade on the hillsides. In one direction your eyes 
follow the way to Bethlehem; in another you see, in a hollow, a 
sheet of water, glinting like polished steel, which is no other than 
the Dead Sea. Beneath at your feet, amongst the low and weather- 
worn hills, which give you the impression of rising and falling 
as if breathing, there lies a village which was once the Bethphage 
of the Gospels, the very place from which our Lord directed the 
ass to be fetched for His use to ride upon at that memorable entry 
into Jerusalem which we are shortly about to recall. Donkeys and 
mules wander in search of pasture along the pathless, but often- 
trod hill slopes. Here and there a shepherd leads his black flock 



412 ' ALL HAIL ' 

(a feature of that neighbourhood) into the mountains around, which 
are studded at intervals with a few olive trees, or perhaps a patch 
of verdure, wrested, as it were, from the grip of the arid rock and 
the scorching sun. 

It is eventide. All is calm and still and serene as the shadows fall. 
The sun seems to be bidding us adieu ; the golden gates of cloud 
are opening to receive him. Already the silver moon is sailing up 
the sky, ready to take her place in the firmament : her court of stars 
are following in her track and ever changing to our eye ; but ever 
changeless in God's supreme order, the host of heaven obeys His 
Sovereign Will. And all this while one's soul is filled with unspeak- 
able wonder and awe at the mystery of the future before us when 
life's sunset shall come; with a longing to penetrate the darkness of 
the Unknown but only Real Life hidden with Christ in God, until 
H'e shall reval all to us when, like England's great poet, we have 
crossed the bar. 

We must return now to Jerusalem and our Lord's entry. The 
Sabbath was over at Bethany. The morning of the first day of 
the week which we know as Passion Week had come. Jesus pre- 
pared to make His entry into Jerusalem' as the Messianic King. 
The entry into Jerusalem took place as it did by the deliberate in- 
tention of our Lord. He intended to make a great appeal to Jerusa- 
lem by the sight of an entry consciously based on the words of the 
prophet Zechariah. To see the Kingly Figure riding upon an ass, 
the animal of peace, as the horse is of war, surrounded by the re- 
joicing procession, would remind every one of the words of the 
prophet. Zechariah ix. verse 9: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of 
Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh 
unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon 
an ass and (even) upon a colt the foal of an ass.' 

This was a symbolic appeal perfectly understood by Eastern minds ; 
a silent appeal to the rulers of the whole nation which would speak 
more eloquently than any" words. Would they accept or reject this 
Messiah? Our Lord forsesaw what would happen. Not so His 
disciples, who were evidently full of the highest hopes, in spite of 
all their Master's warnings. It was a morning of early spring when 
the procession set out from the home of Bethany. All the four 
Evangelists record the entry. The three first describe the approach 
from Bethany; St. John alone takes the standpoint of one who was 
with the multitude that came out from Jerusalem to meet Him. 

St. Matthew xxi. verse i : 'And when they drew nigh unto Jerusa- 
lem, and were come to Bethphage unto the mount of Olives, then 
sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 413 

against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt 
with her ; loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say 
aught unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them ; and 
straightway he will send them. All this was done that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the 
daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and 
sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. And the disciples 
went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and 
the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. 
And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way ; others 
cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. 
And the multitude that went before, and that followed, cried, say- 
ing, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was 
come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? 
And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of 
Galilee.' 

St. John alone records the use of branches of palm trees at the 
entry of our Lord into Jerusalem; they were borne by the people 
from Jerusalem who went out to meet the Messiah. These people 
were Galilean and Perasan pilgrims who had come up for the feast. 
Palm trees are rare in Palestine now. In the days of our Lord it 
was different : Jericho was then, in the first half of the first cen- 
tury, the city of palm trees, just as it had been in the days of the 
Old Testament. The palm tree was an emblem of righteousness. 
The date is a favourite food of the Eastern peoples. Even camels 
feed on them. The palm tree comes in very handily for many 
different uses; the leaves for roofing; the branches for fences; 
the fibre for ropes and baskets. The syrup 'dibs' (date honey) is 
sweet to drink. When anxious to do honour to a victor in a tri- 
umphal procession, people used to wave palm fronds in front of 
him. Thus the palm branches were waved for Jesus upon the oc- 
casion of His public entry into Jerusalem, as a symbol of triumph 
and a sign of welcome to the Messiah. At some spot on the well- 
known caravan road between Jericho and Jerusalem, the multitude 
which was following Christ met the multitude which was coming 
out from Jerusalem to greet Him. 

St. Luke xix. verse ZJ'- 'And when he was come nigh, even now 
at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the 
disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all 
the mighty works that they had seen.' 

This seems to tell us that it was just when the point on the 
road was reached where Jerusalem comes in view that the whole 



414 ' ALL HAIL ' 

multitude began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice, in 
words partly taken from the ii8th Psalm, and partly taken from 
the people's responses used with this Psalm on solemn festivals. 
The words given by St. Matthew are : 'Hosanna to the Son of David : 
blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in 
the highest.' Hosanna is taken from Psalm cxviii. verse 25, which 
begins, 'Annah hoshi'ah na' ('Save now!' or 'Save, pray!'). It 
was used as a shout of joy and welcome; a kind of holy 'Hurrah,' 
as it has been quaintly called. 

It was customary for the people of Jerusalem to greet the pil- 
grims to the Passover on their arrival, but this was the triumphant 
welcome of One who claimed to be the Messiah. The Pharisees 
who were among the crowd noticed it and said: 'Perceive ye how 
ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him' (St. John 
xii. verse 19). Then they turned to the Master Himself in helpless 
rage. 

St. Luke xix. verses 39, 40: 'And some of the Pharisees from 
among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. 
And he answered and said unto them, I tell you, that, if these 
should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out' 

The procession advanced towards Jerusalem, and it seems to have 
been just where the full view of the city opens to the eye, that the 
procession paused, and our Lord gazed upon the city and 'wept over 
it, saying. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enerhies 
shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee 
in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy 
children within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon 
another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation' (St. 
Luke xix. verses 41-44). 

Our Lord's bodily eyes beheld the glory both of the Temple and 
the city, and at the same time, with His mind's eye. He saw as in 
a vision the Roman camp, the Roman legions, enclosing all in a 
fatal and crushing grasp, till all those walls and buildings lay even 
with the ground, and all the crowded population within them was 
laid low. This wonderful prophetic vision of the ruin of that proud 
city set forth in our Lord's words, proved, as we know, in a few 
years' time, literally true. It was the spirit of blind pride and self- 
confidence, the spirit which wrought Christ's death, the spirit which 
refused to be enlightened, even by Christ Himself, that some forty 
years after, by rash defiance of Roman power, brought on the Holy 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 415 

City the utter destruction over which our Lord now wept as He 
foresaw and foretold it. 

Jesus had wept by the grave of Lazarus, and now wept at the ter- 
rible judgment, which those who had already plotted His death, 
because He had raised Lazarus to life, were bringing on themselves 
and on their city. 

The question arises : How is this hearty welcome of the multitude 
to be reconciled with the clamouring for the Lord's Crucifixion, 
which, later on in the week, overcame the reluctance of Pilate? 
The multitude who went out to meet Jesus consisted chiefly of pil- 
grims come up from the country for the feast. They were friendly 
to Jesus, but the Jews of Jerusalem were mostly hostile to Him. 
Their leaders, the chief priests and scribes, sought to take Jesus 
by craft, and put Him to death. 

St. Mark xiv. verse 2 : 'But they said, Not on the feast day, lest 
there be an uproar of the people.' 

The traitor disciple sought opportunity to betray Jesus to them 
In the absence of the friendly multitude. St. Luke xxii. verse 
6 : 'And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray him unto 
them in the absence of the multitude.' 

Still, it must be admitted that the enthusiasm of the pilgrims 
which lasted while they expected His acceptance by the heads of 
the nation, and by the people of Jerusalem, rapidly vanished when 
they realised His rejection. They had no leader, and His condem- 
nation both by the Jews and the Romans, brought to bear upon them 
the whole forces of spiritual authority and material power. The 
unexpectedness of the blow delivered by the chief priests stunned the 
leaderless multitude, and they submitted as they had often sub- 
mitted before. That the people did not really understand who this 
Prophet of Nazareth was, whom they first welcomed and then de- 
serted, is plain enough when we remember that His own disciples 
did not fully understand the meaning of His Entry into Jerusalem 
until after the Resurrection. 

Within the gates, the citizens, as distinguished from the pilgrim 
multitudes, displayed their ignorance or indifference by such a 
question as, 'Who is this?' To which the pilgrims replied, 'This is 
Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee' (St. Matthew xxi. 10, 11). 

Our Lord must have felt in this attitude of the people of Jerusa- 
lem some foreshadowing of His coming rejection. He must have 
felt also the sadness that had moved Him even to tears at the first 
sight of Jerusalem, as He looked now on the crowded streets, and 
the magnificent Temple filled with multitudes of worshippers, and 
realised how near was the end — the end of His own ministry and 



/t6 'ALL HAIL' 

lite, and in a few short years the end of the Temple and of the 
i/alion. He went mto the Temple, but we are not told that He 
tanght on this occasion. He seems to have looked round H'im at all 
that was going on, and silently to have returned to Bethany with 
His disciples. There the night was spent, and the next morning, 
the morning of the second day in Passion Week, the Monday, He 
went with His disciples again early to the Temple. At that hour 
the Temple v/as crowded with worshippers, and the traffic which 
our Lord had once before attempted to stop was going on. The 
traffickers consisted largely of money-changers, who changed the 
money of Jews from foreign countries, in order that they might 
make their contributions, as was required by the Temple authorities, 
in Jewish money. Besides the money-changers, there were num- 
bers of sellers of doves, which were used for sacrifices. The high 
priest himself made a profit by selling these doves to the merchants, 
v/ho sold them in the Temple, and was thus himself interested in 
maintaining this traffic. 

The stir of this traffic in the Temple courts must have interfered 
Vv^ith the quiet meditation and prayer for which the Temple was 
intended, and our Lord was indignant at the sight. 

St. Matthew xxi. 12-16: 'And Jesus went into the temple of God, 
and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and over- 
threw the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them' that 
sold doves, and said unto them. It is written. My house shall be 
called the house of prayer ; but ye have made it a den of thieves. 
And the blind and the lamiC came to him in the temple; and he 
healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the won- 
derful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and 
saying, Hosanna to the Son of David ; they were sore displeased, 
and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith 
unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes 
and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?' 

Our Lord's judgment on the traffic in the Temple was really a 
judgment on the high priest, and the whole body of priests who 
permitted this desecrating traffic, and made money out of it. But 
they did not dare openly to interfere with Jesus, as at that early 
hour the Temple was full of pilgrim's from Galilee and Peraea, 
whose enthusiasm for Jesus was unmistakable. The chief priests 
and scribes then contented themselves with remonstrating at the 
Messianic claim implied in the children's hosannas, hoping to in- 
duce Jesus to silence the children, as the Pharisees had attempted to 
induce Him to silence His disciples the day before, during the trium- 
phant procession into Jerusalem. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 417 

Our Lord's reply amounted to an acceptance of the position of 
the Messiah, and the hosannas were appropriate as an acknowledg- 
ment of the Messianic works of healing He had just done in the 
Temple. Thus, the second day of Passion Week was marked by 
our Lord's manifestation of Himself as Messiah, by His mighty 
works in the great centre of national worship. The night was 
again spent at Bethany, and on the Tuesday morning early our 
Lord was again in the Temple, where He walked and taught in 
the Porches ; and where soon after His arrival he was met by the 
chief priests, who had probably held a meeting the night before, 
and decided on challenging His authority for all He did. 

We read in St. Matthew xxi. verses 23-27 : 'And when he was 
come into the Temple, the chief priests and the elders of the 
people came unto him as he was teaching, and said. By what au- 
thority doest thou these things? and w^ho gave thee this authority? 
And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one 
thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what au- 
thority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? 
from heaven or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, say- 
ing, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us. Why did 
ye not then believe him ? but if we shall say, Of men ; we fear 
the people; for all held John as a prophet. And they answered 
Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them. Neither 
tell I you by what authority I do these things.' 

The chief priests being thus silenced, the Pharisees, with the 
Herodians (the party who accepted Herod's kingship as rightful), 
devised a subtle question to entrap Jesus into an answer that would, 
they hoped, either give ground for an accusation of seditioai 
against the Roman empire, or, if He avoided that, would involve 
Him in the discredit of supporting the Roman rule, which would 
shake His popularity with the fiery patriots of Galilee. 

We find the account of this in St. Matthew xxii. verses 15-22: 
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might en- 
tangle him in his talk. And they sent unto him their disciples 
with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, 
and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any 
man; for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us there- 
fore, What thinkest thou, Is it lawful to give tribute unto C«sar, 
or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness and said, Why 
tempt ye me, ye hyprocrites? Shew me the tribute money. And 
they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose 
is this image and superscription? iThey say unto him', Caesar's. 
Then saith he unto them. Render therefore unto Csesar the thin^rs 



4i8 'ALL HAIL' 

which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. 
V/hen they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, 
and went their way.' 

We will take one only of the other questions put to our Lord 
by His opponents in the Temple. We read as follows in St. Mark 
xii. verses 28-34: 'And one of the scribes came, and having heard 
them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered 
them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 
And Jesus answered him. The first of all the commandments is, 
Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first 
commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment 
greater than these. And the scribe said unto him. Well, Master, 
thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none 
other but he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the 
understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and 
to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt of- 
ferings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered dis- 
creetly, he said unto him. Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
God.' 

Our Lord now left the Porches, and turned to go up into the 
Temple building, and there He sat down, perhaps on the flight of 
steps, and watched the people. St. Mark's account of the incident 
gives a lifelike picture (xii. verses 41-44) : 'And Jesus sat over 
against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the 
treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came 
a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make 
a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto 
them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more 
in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: for all they did 
cast in of their abundance ; but she of her want did cast in all 
that she had, even all her living.' 

At this point we may mention a very important event which 
occurred in the Temple. This was the symbolic coming of the 
Gentile world to Christ in the person of its representatives — certain 
Greeks who wished to see Him. St. John alone gives an account 
of this. 

St. John xii. verses 20-33 '• 'And there were certain Greeks among 
them that came up to worship at the feast: the same came there- 
fore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, 
saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew ; 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 419 

and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them, 
saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into 
the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth 
forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he 
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If 
any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall 
also my servant be : if any man serve me, him will my Father 
honour. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, 
save me from this hour : but for this cause came I unto this hour. 
Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, 
saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The 
people therefore, that stood by, and heard it; said that it thundered : 
others said. An angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, 
This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. Now is 
the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be 
cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die.' 

This seems, from its position in St. John's account, to have 
been the last occurrence on this third day of Passion Week. That 
some of our Lord's teaching, which we shall presently consider, 
belongs to this and the following day is probable, for we read of 
its effects (St. John xii. verses 42, 43) : 'Nevertheless among the 
chief rulers also many believed on him ; but because of the Pharisees 
they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the syna- 
gogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of 
God.' 

With the great series of woes against the false teaching of 
the Pharisees, our Lord seems to have closed His teaching in 
the Temple. Each woe in St. Matthew's account in the twenty- 
fourth chapter begins with the words, 'Woe unto you, scribes and 
Pharisees, hypocrites.' But even in the midst of His denuncia- 
tions our Lord keeps His tender love and pity for the lost city and 
its inhabitants. 

St. Matthew xxiii. verses 34-39: 'Wherefore, behold, I send unto 
you prophets, and wise men, and scribes : and some of them ye shall 
kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your syna- 
gogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon you may 
come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of 
righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom 
ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you. 
All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which 



420 ' ALL HAIL ' 

are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 
and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 
For I say unto you. Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, 
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.' 

The most important part of our Lord's last teaching now claims 
our attention. This is the series of parables spoken in the Temple 
to the people with the chief priests and Pharisees, who heard 
and understood their application to themselves. The first of these 
parables in the Temple is the Parable of the Two Sons. St. 
Matthew xxi. verses 28-31: 'But what think ye? A certain man had 
two sons; and he came to the first, and said. Son, go work to-day 
in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not : but afterwards 
he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said like- 
wise. And he answered and said, I go, sir : and went not. Whether 
of them' twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, 
The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That 
the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. 
For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye be- 
lieved him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: 
and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might 
believe him.' 

The first son represented the publicans and harlots, whose re- 
fusal of the father's call was implied in their lawless life ; yet af- 
terwards they repented and obeyed the call. The other son, who 
made a great profession of obedience, represented the Pharisees, 
who felt no need of repentance ; and so the outcasts of society go 
into the kingdom of heaven before the false professors of religion. 

Immediately after this parable came a far more important one. 
It is found in St. Matthew xxi. verses 33-39: '. . . . There was 
a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it 
round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and 
let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: when the 
time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husband- 
men, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husband- 
men took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and 
stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more (greater) 
than the first, and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he 
sent unto them his son, saying. They will reverence my son. But 
when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, 
This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his 
inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vine- 
yard, and slew him.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 421 

In order that the chief priests might perceive unmistakably that 
He spoke of them, our Lord drove home the meaning of this 
parable. The neglect and unbelief shown by the son representing 
the Pharisees in the former parable, is seen in this parable intensi- 
fied into deliberate rebellion, carried to its extreme expression 
in the murder by the husbandmen of the king's son. The husband- 
men are the Jewish nation, represented and condemned in the 
person of their leaders, who had at this very time already murdered 
Jesus in their hearts. The owner of the vineyard was, of course, 
God, the Father, who had leased His vineyard to Israel of old; 
in accordance with the terms of the lease they were to give Him 
His proper share of the fruits. He sent His servants for the fruits, 
but the husbandmen received them with ill-usage and even put them 
to death. 

He sent to them a greater servant, John the Baptist, and he 
received the same treatment. At last He sent His Son, Jesus 
Christ, and they cast Him out of the vineyard and killed Him. 
Even the chief priests and Pharisees in reply to our Lord's question, 
'What will the lord of the vineyard do to these husbandmen?' 
(verse 40), were obliged to answer, 'He will miserably destroy 
those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other hus- 
bandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their season' (verse 

41). 

'And Jesus said unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures. 
The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head 
of the corner : this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in 
our eyes? Therefore I say unto you. The kingdom of God shall 
be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth. the fruits 
thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: 
but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.' 

This terrible condemnation enraged the chief priests and Phari- 
sees, who felt that it was passed on them. St. Matthew xxii. 
verse 46: 'But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared 
the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.' 

Jesus spoke to them' yet another parable, the parable known as 
the Marriage of the King's Son. St. Matthew xxii. verses 2-14: 
'The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which mjtde 
a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them 
that were bidden; to the wedding and they would not come. Again 
he sent forth other servants, saying. Tell them which are bidden, 
Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings 
are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But 
they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another 



422 ' ALL HAIL ' 

to his merchandise: and the remnant took his servants, and en- 
treated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard 
thereof, he was wroth; and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed 
those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his 
servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were 
not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many 
as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out 
into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they 
found, both bad and good, and the wedding was furnished with 
guests. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw 
there a man which, had not on a wedding garment : and he saith 
unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding 
garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the 
servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast 
him into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.' 

The marriage feast is the Kingdom of God. The King's Son is 
the Christ. The chosen guests are the people ,of the Old Covenant, 
the Jews. The prophets of the Old Testament had been sent to 
them with the King's invitation. They had rejected it, and the 
invitation had been repeated again and again. Judgment on the 
nation followed and was to follow at the hands of the Romans, 
who were the instruments of Divine Justice, as the Chald^eans had 
been in the days of Jeremiah. 

The second part of the parable applies specially to the disciples 
of our Lord, to those who had accepted the invitation and had 
come to the marriage feast of the Gospel. For each of them the 
King supplies a wedding garment. The wedding garment is in- 
dispensable, and one of the guests who has insolently refused to 
put it on — breaking the harmony of the happy company — is thus, 
by his own action, unfitted to remain and is removed from the 
feast. What is the wedding garment? Clearly the Christ-like- 
ness, the righteousness that Christ bestows, the fruit of intimate 
union with Him. Putting on the wedding garment is described 
by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans as putting on the Lord 
Jesus Christ (Romans xiii. verse 14), and again in the Epistle to 
the Ephesians as putting off the old man and putting on the new 
(Ephesians iv. verses 22-24), and again in the Epistle to the Gala- 
tians, *as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put 
on Christ' (Galatians iii. verse 27). 

To refuse the wedding garment, as the guest had done, is to 
put oneself outside the light and joy of the king's guest-chamber, 
in outer darkness by contrast with brightness within. 'Many are 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 423 

called, but few are chosen' (St. Matthew xxii. verse 14). Many 
receive God's call, but only those who take the wedding garment, 
freely offered them, occupy their place among God's chosen. 

This and the preceding parable belong to our Lord's last teaching 
in the Temple, which ended, as we have already seen, with that great 
denunciation of the Temple and of Jerusalem, with which He left 
it for the last time, saying, 'Behold, your house (i.e., the Temple) 
is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see 
me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord' (St. Matthew xxiii. verses 38, 39). 

After His solemn farewell to the Temple, our Lord and His 
disciples left Jerusalem to return to Bethany, as they had done on 
each evening of this week. On this occasion they halted on the 
Mount of Olives, and sat down in full sight of the magnificent 
buildings of the Temple. As they had left the Temple, our Lord 
had predicted to them its coming destruction : 'Seest thou these 
great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another 
that shall not be thrown down' (St. Mark xiii. verse 2). This 
prediction, it may be observed, was literally fulfilled not many years 
after, when the Romans took Jerusalem. 

Meditating on these words, four of our Lord's disciples came to 
Him and asked Him, as He sat on the Mount of Olives, 'Tell us, 
when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all 
these things shall be fulfilled?' (St. Mark xiii. verse 4). 

Our Lord replied with a long prediction of the signs which 
should introduce the ruin of Jerusalem^ when the Son of Man was 
to come in judgment upon that gi.iilty city. That coming was to 
be soon. 'Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not 
pass, till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass 
away: but my words shall not pass away' (St. Mark xiii. verses 
30, 31). 

The Lord had thus answered at great length the disciples' ques- 
tion what the signs were to be, and now turned to their first 
question, when these things were to be. They were to be in the 
time of that generation, but the exact date was not known, even 
to the Lord Himself. 'But of that day and that hour knoweth no 
man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but 
the Father' (St. Mark xiii. verse 32). 

The uncertainty as to the date was intended to produce in His 
disciples the most intense and unwearying watchfulness. 'Take ye 
heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the 
Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his home, and 
gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work,' and 



424 'ALL HAIL' 

commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore : for ye know 
not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, 
or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly, 
he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, 
Watch' (St. Mark xiii. verses 2>2-2>7)- 

In close connection with this teaching of our Lord which we 
have been considering, the suddenness of His coming and the need 
of constant watchfulness on the part of His disciples, are two 
parables, the Parable of the Ten Virgins and the Parable of the 
Talents. They were probably both of them' spoken on the Mount 
of Olives, and addressed to the disciples, who had just listened 
to the discourse on the Last Things. That of the Virgins followed 
directly out of the conclusion of our Lord's discourse, for so to 
live as to be always prepared to meet the Lord, however sudden 
His coming, is its main lesson. 

St. Matthew xxv. verses 1-13: 'Then shall the kingdom of heaven 
be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went 
forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and 
five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and 
took no oil with them : but the wise took oil in their vessels with 
their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and 
slept. And at midnight there was a cry made. Behold, the bride- 
groom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins 
arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the 
wise. Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out. But the 
wise answered, saying, Not so ; lest there be not enough for us 
and you : but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for your- 
selves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and 
they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the 
door was shut. Afterwards came also the other virgins, saying, 
Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said. Verily I say 
unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither 
the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.' 

In this beautiful parable the word-picture of a Jewish wedding 
is used by our Lord to convey a lesson of profound importance, 
the need of personal preparation, in order to receive Him at His 
coming, and to be with Him after it. At evenfall in the East, 
it was the custom' for the bridegroom, with his friends, to come to 
the house of the bride and take her to his own house. On the way 
they were joined by the bride's young friends, the virgins of the 
parable, who accompanied the procession into the hall where the 
marriage feast was held. The bridegroom of the parable was 
coming from far away, so that it was not known at what hour he 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 425 

would arrive. The five wise virgins had provided not only lamps, 
but oil for the lamps; the five foolish virgins had provided lamps, 
but had neglected to provide the necessary oil. The meaning is 
plain. The virgins represent the disciples of Christ; they have 
all the same good intentions, but five carry out and five neglect 
the necessary preparations for performance. The oil represents 
the inward spirit of the Christian life, without which the lamps — 
the outward part of Christianity — will not fulfil their purpose, and 
enable Christians to shine as lights in the world. The need of a 
continual attitude of watchfulness and expectation, in order that 
the coming of Christ to the soul may not be missed, is the practical 
purpose of the teaching of this parable. 

Though some of the first Christians for a time misunderstood 
the form of their Lord's predictions, and expected a visible and 
material, instead of a spiritual, return, their attitude of longing 
for the presence of the Lord was the right one. To love the Lord's 
appearing was a note of true discipleship in St. Paul's opinion, and 
if that coming is spiritually understood, it is a note to-day. Our 
Lord's own words : T will not leave you comfortless : I will come 
to you' (rather, 'am' coming') (St. John xiv. verse 18), remind us 
that the coming of Christ is ever near at hand. He who came to 
Saul on the road to Damascus, and to the Church at Pentecost, is 
ever coming to individuals and societies if only they are longing 
for, and expectant of, His coming. Their own want of preparation, 
their own unreadiness, closed the door of the hall of feasting against 
the foolish virgins ; and it is possible, in the same way, for Chris- 
tians to close the door of opportunity against themselves. Prep- 
aration is necessary if we are not to miss the joy of our Lord's 
coming, and its sequel — the joy of His realised Presence. 

The Parable of the Talents which immediately follows in St. 
Matthew's Gospel deals with the active service required by Christ 
from His disciples. Like the Parable of the Ten Virgins, that of 
the Talents was addressed to disciples, and its lessons are eternally 
applicable to Christian life. True spiritual life must issue in per- 
sonal and purposeful service. 

We find the parable in St. Matthew xxv. verses 14-30: 'For the 
kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who 
called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And 
unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; 
to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took 
his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and 
traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And like- 
wise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But 



426 ' ALL HAIL ' 

he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid 
his lord's money. After a long time the lord of those servants 
Cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received 
five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou 
deliveredst unto me five talents : behold, I have gained beside them 
five talents more. His lord said unto him. Well done, thou good 
and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy 
of thy lord. He also that had received two talents came and said, 
Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents : behold, I have gained 
two other talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well done, 
good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, 
I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy 
of thy lord. Then he which had received the one talent came and 
said, Lord, I knew that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou 
hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed : and I 
was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth : lo, there 
thou hast that that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, 
Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where 
I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest 
therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my 
coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take there- 
fore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. 
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into 
outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 

The Lord's coming is the culmination of the two parables. The 
waiting time in the Parable of the Ten Virgins is to be a watching 
time; the waiting time in the Parable of the Talents is to be a 
working time. To work as well as well as to watch is required of 
those who would have their Lord's approval on H'is return, and 
working is a result of watching. The servants in the Parable of 
the Talents are slaves to whom their master entrusts his property 
that they may use it so as to earn him an increase — as was the cus- 
tom of the world at that time. The meaning of the parable is 
plain. The man travelling into a far country is Christ. The man's 
servants are Christ's disciples. The goods entrusted to the servants 
are all that a Christian has wherewith to serve Christ. Not only 
the natural gifts which we call talents, borrowing the familiar 
name from this very parable, but also the opportunities for service, 
the time, the money, all is given us to be used so as to bring forth 
fruits of increase. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 427 

The absent master in the parable entrusted to his three servants 
a different sum, according to the capacity of each. To one he 
gave five talents, about 1170/.; to another two, about 468Z.; to an- 
other one, about 234/. While their master was away, by diligent 
trading the first and second servants doubled the money entrusted 
to them. 'The third servant, distrustful of his lord and slothful, 
buried in the earth the money committed to him. A long time 
passed. The lord returned, and the day of reckoning came, re- 
sulting in the highest praise and reward for the first two servants, 
and the just rejection of the third. Our Lord here reveals Himself 
as a strict but just master, whose love desires. to lift His disciples 
to the highest and most arduous service of which they are capable. 
Nothing less than their best will satisfy Him. The reward of 
the disciple who has done his best is His Lord's ungrudging praise 
and approval, which enables him to enter into the joy of his Lord. 
There is a further reward of faithful service given. The faithful 
servant is given more work to do. That is the reward the stren- 
uous Christian craves when this life's work is done, when in the 
heavenly city 'His servants shall serve him' (Revelation xxi. verse 

13). ^ 

This parable has a very searching application to Christian life to- 
day. To make the best use of the powers we possess is a part of our 
religious duty : self-development as well as self-denial is a part of 
Christian service, and even as regards our spiritual powers, how com- 
monly is the duty of self-development forgotten. How many persons 
who find time to study secular literature can find no time for the study 
of the Bible ; how many never seriously study a single book of the 
Divine Library so as to grasp and understand it as a whole, but 
content themselves with reading texts and fragments here and 
there in an unconnected and perfunctory way which no one would 
dream of pursuing in dealing with any other literature. The wicked 
and slothful servant in the parable had no faith in his lord's good- 
will, and no sense of his own duty: he gave up any effort as hope- 
less, certain that he could not satisfy his lord. Thus he brought 
on himself just condemnation when the day of reckoning came. 
This story has its warning message for Christians to-day to re- 
mind them that the very smallest endowments can be and must be 
used for Christ, if the disciple is to be greeted with the 'Well done, 
good and faithful servant,' at his Lord's coming. ' 

Immediately after this parable follows the great Parable-vision 
of the Last Judgment recorded in St. Matthew xxv. verses 31-45: 
*When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy 
angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; 



428 'ALL HAIL' 

and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats 
on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for 
you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and 
ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a 
stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, 
and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then 
shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee 
an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When 
saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed 
thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto 
you. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say unto them 
on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels : for I was an hungred, and 
ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I 
was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me 
not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they 
also answer him, saying. Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or 
athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not 
minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I 
say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
these, ye did it not to me.' 

This vision sets forth very beautifully, in our Lord's clear and 
imperishable words, the great Christian truth that in serving our 
fellow-men we are serving our Lord ; and that what is done to them 
is done to H'im. The commentary which supplements this vision 
is to be found in St. John's Gospel, in the thirteenth chapter, in 
the washing of the disciples' feet, where our Lord first sets the 
example by doing what He Himself afterwards commanded. T 
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you' 
(St. John xiii. verse 15). 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Gospels (The Sadducee Plot and the Pharisees— The 
Treachery of Judas— The Institution of the Lord's Supper 
— Gethsemane— The Trial before the Sanhedrin— The 
Trial before Pilate— The Crucifixion and Death). 

We have been considering our Lord's teaching during the early 
part of Passion Week, and we must now turn to the action of the 
leaders of the people in Jerusalem. Our Lord's triumphant entry 
into Jerusalem as the Messiah, and the boldness of His action in 
cleansing the Temple, had brought matters to a head. The at- 
tempts to ensnare Him in His talk, such as the question of paying 
tribute to Caesar, had failed, and the Sadducee rulers of the nation 
felt that His mighty works, and His great reputation especially 
with the Galilean pilgrims who filled the city, made Him a real 
danger to their supremacy. They had already put themselves at 
the head of the Pharisee party after the raising of Lazarus, and 
the high priest, Caiaphas, had guided the decision of the Council of 
the chief priests and Pharisees to put Him to death. They had 
then, however, had no opportunity of taking Him, for He had 
retired into Peraea. Now He was in Jerusalem again and daily in 
the Temple, where He taught and worked miracles of healing. But 
they dared not attempt His arrest in the Temple, where the multi- 
tude of Galilean pilgrims would have stopped such action by force. 
An informal meeting was called to the palace of Caiaphas, near 
the Temple ; and the meeting seems to have been held on the 
Tuesday night. To this centre of Sadducee rule assembled not 
only the chiefs of the priesthood and the Temple officials and the 
relatives of the high priest, who constituted the priestly council, 
but also the Pharisees and Scribes who had been so often and so 
severely denounced by Jesus. But eager as they were to put Him 
to death they could not risk an arrest at the moment, and intended 
to wait until after the Passover, when the pilgrims had dispersed. 
They were afraid of a tumult, for Pilate, who was in Jerusalem, had 
a double garrison inl Antonia for the Passover, and would only have 
been too pleased to take vengeance for any disturbance, not only 
on the multitude, but on the leaders of the people. At this junc- 
ture Judas arrived at the high priest's palace and offered to betray 

429 



430 



' ALL HAIL ' 



his Master. This was just what they wanted, and they 'weighed 
unto him' (R.V.) a sum of money to betray Jesus to them in the 
absence of the multitude. The price paid was thirty pieces of 
silver, about 3/. 15^., the price of a slave. This price was paid out 
of the Temple moneys intended for the purchase of victims for 
sacrifice. The force of this symbolism is unmistakable. This pur- 
chase seems to be also a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy (in 
Zechariah xi. verse 12) : 'So they weighed for my price thirty 
pieces of silver.' 

The blood-money was paid and the traitor was to complete his 
bargain upon the first opportunity. How had Judas sunk to this 
depth of infamy? Apparently he had been bitterly disappointed 
at the refusal of Jesus to take the earthly kingdom of the Jewish 
Messiah; like the other Apostles, he had expected an earthly king- 
dom, and had been building upon a high and lucrative position for 
himself. The others' loyalty to Jesus had survived their disap- 
pointment, but whatever loyalty Judas had once had, had been 
eaten away by the deadly vice of covetousness which made him 
grudge Mary's precious spikenard, as though it was so much taken 
from his own pocket, and raise a brazen objection. To assist in 
founding an earthly kingdom had its material attractions for him, 
but as the spiritual nature of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus 
was then engaged in establishing, became unmistakable, Judas was 
disgusted, and His Lord's predictions of His own rejection, suffer- 
ings, and death, which were to end His ministry that very week, 
filled Judas with the bitterest resentment. He felt indignantly that 
he was to have nothing out of his connection with the Kingdom, but 
the discredit of being connected with a failure. What was then 
to be done? How could he make the best of a bad business? His 
ruling passion guided him, and he went and sold his Master to the 
priestly council. As he took the blood-money he may have con- 
gratulated himself that he was cheating his employers, for Jesus 
was certain to be arrested and put to death whether Judas led the 
Temple guards or not. 

When Judas returned from Jerusalem on the Wednesday, his 
absence would probably be explained to the other disciples as con- 
nected with arrangements for the Feast of the Passover. This 
was to take place in Jerusalem, and our Lord sent two of the 
Apostles from Bethany to prepare the Paschal Supper at the house 
of one who was evidently a disciple, for no mere stranger would 
have acted as he did. St. Mark tells us, in chapter xiv. verses 13- 
16: 'And he sent forth two of his disciples, and saith unto them, 
Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 431 

pitcher of water: follow him. And wheresoever he shall go in, 
say ye to the goodman of the house, The Master saith, Where is 
the giiestchamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples ? 
And he will shew you a large upper room furnished and prepared: 
there make ready for us. And his disciples went forth, and came 
into the city, and found as he had said unto them : and they made 
ready the passover.' 

In the East, a woman usually carried a pitcher of water; a man 
with a pitcher of water was apparently a signal arranged by Jesus 
to bring his messengers into touch with the owner of the house 
with whom he had made an arrangement. 

In St. Matthew xxvi. verses 20-25, we read of the eating of the 
Passover and of a sad announcement which accompanied it. 'Now 
when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as 
they did eat, he said. Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall 
betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every 
one of them to say unto him. Lord, is it I? And he answered 
and said. He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same 
shall betray me. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him : but 
woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed ! it had been 
good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, which be- 
trayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I ? He said unto him. 
Thou hast said.' 

We notice that none of the other disciples suspected Judas, who 
with brazen assurance, asked, Ts it I?' Jesus seems to have whis- 
pered to him the answer unheard by the rest. We learn from St. 
John that after that, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who was leaning 
on Jesus' breast, asked Jesus who it was, and Jesus indicated 
Judas by giving him the sop, adding to Judas words which no one 
else understood, That thou doest, do quickly' (St. John xiii. verse 
27). Whereupon Judas went out, unrepentant, to consummate the 
betrayal. 

We come now to the Lord's Supper. The following is St. Luke's 
account of the Institution of the Lord's Supper (St. Luke xxii. 
verses 19, 20) : 'And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, 
and gave it unto them, saying. This is my body which is given for 
you : this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after 
supper, saying. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which 
is shed for you.' 

St. Luke's account may be supplemented by St. Mark's in chap- 
ter xiv. verses 18-24: 'And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, 
Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall 
betray me. And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him 



432 ' ALL HAIL ' 

one by one, Is it I? and another said, Is it I? And he answered 
and said unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with me 
in the dish. The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him ; 
but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good 
were it for that man if he had never been born. And as they did 
eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to 
them, and said. Take, eat: this is my body. And he took the cup, 
and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all 
drank of it. And he said unto them. This is my blood of the new 
testament, which is shed for many.' 

Here let us look at our picture of the Lord's Last Supper, and try 
to realise the touching scene. The Passover had been eaten before 
this solemn Institution took place, the Passover which had pointed 
in type to Him through all the past had now reached its consum- 
mation. He was the Lamb destined to be slain, 'the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world' (Revelation xiii. verse 8). The 
Great Sacrament He thus instituted was to be to H'is disciples the 
Sacrament of union with Him and with each other. In some mys- 
terious and wonderful way He Himself, His spirit and His char- 
acter, was to be conveyed through this rite to those who took 
part in it, in loving remembrance of Him. The Christian Church 
has from the first made the Lord's Supper its chief service; for a 
long period there was no other regular service, and it remains the 
supreme centre of the Church's worship and the symbol of the unity 
of all Christians as the one Body of the One Lord, the whole world 
over. 

St. John, who omits the actual Institution because it had already 
been given by the other three Evangelists, gives much, not else- 
where recorded, that our Lord did and spoke on that eventful 
night in the Upper Room. In the thirteenth chapter, verses 2-17, 
we have some sacramental teaching of our Lord which emphasises 
the self-sacrifice which is one aspect of the Lord's Supper. The 
vividness of the details proclaims that the Evangelist was an eye- 
witness. 

'And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart 
of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him; Jesus knowing that 
the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come 
from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and laid aside 
his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he 
poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, 
and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. Then 
Cometh he to Simon Peter; and Peter saith unto him. Lord, dost 
thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him. What I do 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 433 

thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith 
unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, 
If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith 
unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. 
Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his 
feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For he 
knew who should betray him; therefore said he. Ye are not all 
clean. So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his gar- 
ments, and was set down again, he said unto them. Know ye what 
I have done to you ? Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye say 
well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed 
your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have 
given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his 
lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye 
know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.' 

Judas was one of those whose feet Jesus had washed, and, un- 
touched by the Master's self-sacrificing service, he was betraying 
him already in his heart, and intending to do so in act that very 
night. Jesus set the example of self-sacrificing service for His 
servants to follow, and assured them that happy (rather than 
blessed, the same word used in the Beatitudes) are those who do 
so. When Judas had gone out Jesus began the discourses in the 
Upper Room with the words of triumph: 'Now is the Son of man 
glorified, and God is glorified in him' (St. John xiii. verse 31). 

The words in this discourse, Tittle children, yet a little while I 
am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, 
Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you' (verse 33), 
drew from Peter a perplexed man's question, 'Lord, whither goest 
thou? Jesus answered him. Whither I go, thou canst not follow 
me now ; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto him. 
Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for 
thy sake. Jesus answered him. Wilt thou lay down thy life for my 
sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee. The cock shall not crow, 
till thou hast denied me thrice' (St. John xiii. verses 36-38). 

The following chapters of St. John's Gospel, xiv., xv., xvi., and 
xvii., embody the last conversation of our Lord with His disciples, 
which took place in the Upper Room after the institution of the 
Great Sacrament was over. Hours passed while our. Lord poured 
forth His tenderest and deepest teachings for the comfort of His 
sorrowing disciples, from whom He was soon to be taken. He 
knew the suffering that lay before Him, but He thought only of the 
lesser sorrow and sufferings of His disciples. He sought to lessen 



434 'ALL HAIL' 

it by the revelation of the mysterious perfection of the union with 
Himself, which was to be theirs after He was gone, through the 
Comforter, the Holy, Spirit. These discourses begin with the famil- 
iar words, 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, be- 
lieve also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if 
it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
you' (St. John xiv. verses i, 2). 

Then follows his conversation with Thomas and Philip, which 
gives the clearest revelation of His own Divinity (St. John xiv. 
verse 9) : '. . • . Have I been so long time with you, and 
yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen the Father; 
and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?' 

Very significantly does this revelation come from the lips of Him 
who had just instituted the Great Sacrament, the Holy Communion. 

Then follows the promise of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, 
which the Father would send in the Son's name. The intimate 
union of Christ and His Church is set forth with wonderful felicity 
in the allegory of the True Vine and its branches. The wonderful 
conversation and discourses of these chapters close with the last 
prayer — the prayer of consecration — of our Lord for His disciples, 
which fills the seventeenth chapter, and of which only a small part 
can be given here: 

St. John xvii. verses 17-26: 'Sanctify them through thy truth: thy 
word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I 
also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify my- 
self, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither 
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on 
me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou. Father, 
art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the 
world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which 
thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as 
we are one : I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made 
perfect in one ; that the world may know that thou hast sent me, 
and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father I will that 
they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that 
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou 
lovedst! me before the foundation of the world, O righteous Father, 
the world hath not known thee : but I have known thee, and these 
have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them 
thy name, and will declare it : that the love wherewitlr thou hast 
loved me may be in them, and I in them.' 

At the Feast of the Passover six Psalms were sung: Psalms cxiii. 
and cxiv., during the Feast; Psalms cxv., cxvi., cxvii., cxviii., at 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 435 

the end. Christ and His disciples sang these Psalms, which were 
called the Hallel : this is the 'hymn' with which the Paschal Sup- 
per ended: 'And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into 
the mount of Olives' (St. Matthew xxvi, verse 30). 

The discourses which we have been considering, and the prayer 
followed the hymn, and after the last prayer was ended we read in 
St. John xviii., verse i : 'When Jesus had spoken these words, he 
went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a 
garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.' 

Gethsemane, 'the oil-press,' was a garden on the slope of the 
Mount of Olives, named probably from a press used there to ex- 
tract the oil. The spot identified with it is very small, and gnarled 
old olive trees still grow there. It was probably the property of a 
disciple of Christ's, 'for Jesus oftimes resorted thither with his 
disciples' (verse 2). It was, as the word 'resorted' signifies in the 
original, a place where His disciples assembled to listen to their 
Lord's teaching, and possibly, during the present visit to Jerusalem, 
had been used for passing the night : 'And in the day time he was 
teaching in the temple ; and at night he went out, and abode in the 
mount that is called the mount of Olives' (St. Luke xxi. sy). 

If this was so, Judas may have expected to find them all sleeping 
when he came to complete the betrayal. Jesus, however, did not 
retire to the garden to pass the night in sleep, but as at other 
critical periods of His life, in prayer. There was no idea of avoid- 
ing arrest, for Judas knew the place well, and had been probably 
told that they were going there when he was with them at the 
Paschal Supper. He guided the Temple guard there, not as one 
who was looking for Jesus, but as one who was certain where he 
would find Him. St. Mark records some memorable words of our 
Lord, warning the disciples of what was coming, which were spoken 
on the way to Gethsemane. 

'. . . . All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for 
it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scat- 
tered. But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee' 
(St. Mark xiv. verses 27, 28), 

The reference here is to Zechariah xiii. verse 7 : 'Awake, O sword, 
against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith 
the Lord of hosts : smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scat- 
tered: and I will turn my hand upon the little ones.' 

Then our Lord turned to Peter, who had asserted again that 
though the others might fail, he would not, and warned him that 
before the cock crowed twice he would deny Him thrice. When 
they came to Gethsemane, Jesus carried out His purpose of pre- 



436 * ALL HAIL' 

paring for His Passion by prayer to His Father in Heaven. But 
first He told the body of His disciples to sit still while he went to 
pray. St. Mark's account, which probably came from St. Peter, is 
full of graphic detail. 

'And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to 
be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, My 
soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. 
And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed 
that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he 
said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee ; take away this 
cup from me : nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt' 
(St. Mark xiv. verses 33-36). 

Our Lord was so faint and weary and sorrowful at heart that he 
kneeled down and fell on His face on the ground, and in an agony 
of prayer He struggled with the temptation to avoid the horrors 
that lay before Him by refusing to drink the cup of anguish. But 
the brave spirit conquered, and He resolved to drink that cup and 
mentally drank it even to^ the bitter dregs. What was this cup the 
Father had given Him to drink, which he took and drained of H'is 
own free choice? It was not only the awful death of the Cross, 
intensified by the hatred and contempt of His own countrymen, it 
was not only the betrayal and the denial, and the desertion which 
He knew He was to meet from His own circle of friends and dis- 
ciples, even from His chosen Apostles; it was all this and some- 
thing besides far deeper and more wonderful. In some mysterious 
way on Him was laid 'the iniquity of us all' (Isaiah liii. verse 6). 
The marvellous prophetic vision of the suffering Messiah was in 
Him to be literally^ fulfilled. How he bore the burden of the whole 
world's sins is beyond our fathoming, but the healing power of His 
sufferings in removing sin from the heart of all sorts and conditions 
of men is a fact attested by the experience of centuries. By the 
power of His matchless sympathy He became as it were a nerve 
over which passed not only all the sorrows and the sufferings, but 
also all the sins of mankind. And all this He bore in His human 
nature as man, as the representative of the race. As St. Paul 
wrote to the Philippians (ii. verse 7), He 'emptied himself, taking 
the form of a (bond-servant, R.M.) servant, being made in the 
likeness of men' (R.V.). 

Thus He accomplished the Father's loving purpose by offering the 
willing sacrifice of Himself to bring life,; His own Life, to mankind. 
The life was made available through the death, and as a matter of 
experience the Saviour reigns over the heart of man from the Cross, 
which is His throne. The one alleviation He asked was denied 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 437 

Him. He asked the three who best understood Him, Peter, James, 
and John, to watch with Him through His awful vigil, and He found 
them asleep. Perhaps too, the watching was intended to strengthen 
Peter against the coming temptation, for Jesus specially addressed 
him, 'Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?' 
(St. Mark xiv. verse 37). 

St. Luke helps us to realise the suffering and the stress of the 
wrestling in prayer at Gethsemane by one thrilling verse, 'And 
being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as 
it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground' (St. Luke 
xxii. verse 44). 

Suddenly, while He was speaking to His disciples, came the 
tramp of trained men and the flash of lights. It was a band of 
Roman soldiers from' the garrison stationed in Antonia, with a 
body of Temple police (officers) sent by the chief priests and 
Pharisees. Judas was their guide, and with the cynicism of covet- 
ousness he went up to Jesus, and kissed Him, a kiss being the 
signal he had arranged. Jesus said to him very quietly, 'Friend, 
wherefore art thou come?' (St. Matthew xxvi. verse 50). Words 
calculated to give Judas an opportunity to repent by reminding him 
of the infamy of what hej was doing, and of the miserable bribe for 
which he was incurring that infamy. Jesus, getting no answer, 
added to unmask the hypocrite, 'Judas, betrayest thou the Son of 
man with a kiss?' (St. Luke xxii. verse 48). 

Then Jesus stood forth in calm and fearless majesty, desiring 
only to shield His disciples, and asked the armed men, 'Whom seek 
ye?' In the uncertain light they had evidently not recognised 
Jesus, for they answered, 'Jesus of Nazareth' (St. John xviii. 

verses 4, 5). 'Jesus saith unto them, I am he As soon 

then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell 
to the ground' (St. John xviii. verses 5, 6). This involuntary pros- 
tration was the effect of the serene majesty of Him whom' they 
had come to take. Perhaps they were also expecting some display 
of supernatural power. The fact, at any rate, showed plainly that 
Jesus gave Himself up of His own free will. Then He interceded 
for His disciples, 'I have told you that I am he : if therefore ye seek 
me, let these go their way' (verse 8). 

Only one of the Apostles resisted; Peter drew his sword and 
smote the high priest's servant, who was probably at the moment 
laying his hand on Jesus. 'Jesus, therefore, said to Peter, Put up 
thy sword into the sheath : the cup which my Father hath given me, 
shall I not drinkj it? Then the band and the captain and officers of 
the Jews took Jesus, and bound him. And led him away to Annas 



438 'ALL HAIL' 

first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high 
priest that same year' (St. John xviii. verses 11-13). 

Annas, it may be explained, was the most remarkable figure in 
the Sadducean hierarchy: he and his five sons held the high priest- 
hood in succession. He had been high priest from a.d. 7 to 14, 
and his son-in-law, Joseph Caiaphas, held the high priesthood twelve 
years, from a.d. 25 to 36. Through the members of his family this 
successful intriguer for many years ruled Jerusalem. 

Here a word may be said about the plot which the Sadducees 
had devised, and the Pharisees had conspired with them to carry 
out. The plan was this. To arrest Jesus by night, when the Gali- 
leans in the city could know nothing of what was going on. To 
hurry Him before the Sanhedrin the same night, to bring Him 
condemned by them before Pilate at the early dawn, there to accuse 
Him of stirring up a revolution and putting Himself forward as 
the King of the Jews, and to get Him condemned and crucified 
forthwith. Once He was on the Cross, the Roman soldiers might 
be depended on to carry through the execution, in spit of any 
popular interference. This plot was literally carried out. 

The arrest of Jesus took place about one o'clock in the morning 
on the Friday. No time was lost, and probably about two o'clock 
the preliminary private examination was made before Annas in the 
presence of Caiaphas, who together with Annas was waiting up 
all night to hurry through the preliminary examination. This was 
at the palace of the Hight Priest. Before this private examina- 
tion, John had obtained admission for himself and Peter to the 
courtyard of the High Priest's palace. 

'Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not 
thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not' (St. 
John xviii. verse 17). 

There was a fire in the courtyard, for it was long before sunrise 
and cold. At this fire the servants and officers were warming them- 
selves, and Peter was with them for the same purpose. 

Meanwhile the private examination of Jesus went on. Caiaphas 
asked Him about His disciples and His doctrine. 'Jesus answered 
him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, 
and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret 
have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them which heard 
me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said. 
And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by 
struck Jesus with the palm' of his hand, saying, Answerest thou 
the high priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 439 

tear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?' (St. 
John xviii. verses 20-23). 

This closed the private examination before Annas; then followed 
the examination before Caiaphas, to whom Annas sent Jesus of- 
ficially. This was in another part of the palace. When Jesus was 
brought into the Court at the close of the private examination, at- 
tention was drawn to the stranger, Peter. 

St. John xviii. verses 25-27 : 'And Simon Peter stood and warmed 
himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of 
his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. One of the 
servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut 
off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Peter then 
denied again; and immediately the cock crew.' 

Something in Peters manner as his Lord w^as led by had re- 
vealed his interest and love, and led to the conjecture that he was 
a disciple. At three o'clock, an examination of Jesus took place 
before an irregular meeting of the Sanhedrin, and before five 
o'clock, at a hasty regular meeting of the same body, the formal 
sentence of the Sanhedrin was pronounced. 

At the earlier informal meeting of the Sanhedrin at three o'clock 
in the morning, the chief priests and the elders and scribes, and all 
the Council, had sought witness against Jesus to put Him to death. 
John, and probably Peter, were present, and to their memory the 
account of this trial is due. Mark's account helps us to realise 
the scene. The High Priest and the Council sat on cushions on 
the floor in a semicircle, the High Priest in the middle. Jesus was 
forced to stand, bound with cords, though it was usual to allow a 
prisoner to be seated, and this Prisoner was very weary with the 
long night of trial. The Council brought forward many witnesses, 
whose witness agreed not together: the Prisoner maintained a 
dignified silence. Nothing worthy of a death sentence could be 
proved, and yet it was to pass this and nothing else, that the High 
Priest and the Council were there. 

St. Mark xiv. verse 60-65: 'And the high priest stood up in the 
midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it 
which these witness against thee? But he held his peace, and an- 
swered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto 
him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? And Jesus said, 
I am : and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest 
rent his clothes, and saith. What need we any further witnesses? 
Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all con- 
demned him to' be guilty of death. And some began to spit on 



440 'ALL HAIL ^ 

him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him; and to say unto him. 
Prophesy: and the servants did strike him with the palms of their 
hands.' 

It seems almost incredible that men of the position of members 
of the Sanhedrin should descend to such cowardly brutalities as 
spitting in the face of a bound prisoner, and buffeting him, and 
mocking him'. But the calm dignity of the Divine Prisoner, and 
above all. His great claim to the Messiaship which had enabled them 
to convict Him of blasphemy, had filled them with impotent rage. 
Rage is evident as the motive of the High Priest's action; it forced 
him to his feet when he ought to have carried out the examination 
seated, and probably many of the scribes and Pharisees had listened 
to Jesus' denunciation of them in the Temple little more than two 
days before, and were eager to avenge themselves on the helpless 
Prisoner, who sd often had defeated them in argument and exposed 
their pretentious piety. 

By the time they had done beating and mocking and reviling 
Jesus, the morning was fully come. Then at five o'clock, at the 
formal meeting of the whole Jewish Council to which we have re- 
ferred, it was decided to take Jesus before the Roman governor; 
and the Sanhedrin, headed by the High Priest, conducted Him to 
Pilate's palace, the Praetorium (Hall of Judgment, A.V.). The 
sentence of death was determined on, but the Jews had no power 
to carry it out. The night trial was technically illegal, and the 
second meeting of the Sanhedrin had had to be held to confirm the 
decision already arrived at. Yet even the letter of the law was 
broken by a sentence and execution carried out on the day of trial. 
Probably it was not yet six o'clock when Jesus was brought before 
Pilate, for the word translated 'early' in St. John xviii. verse 28, is 
used for the fourth watch — three to six a.m. Pilate would have 
been prepared for the trial when, the day before, he granted a de- 
tachment of soldiers to help to make the arrest, and a Roman 
court could be held immediately after sunrise. 

A full account of the private examination before Pilate is given 
by St, John alone, who was no doubt present at it. The Jews re- 
mained outside the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled at this 
Passover season, that is, by entering a house from which all 
leaven had not been removed. 

The' scenes in the trial of our Lord before Pilate took place partly 
outside the Praetorium and partly inside. The accusers of Jesus 
remained outside the Praetorium; Jesus, and the Roman soldiers 
who guarded Him, and St. John were within. First Pilate went out 
and asked them what charge they had against Jesus, and as their 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 44i 

indefinite reply that He was a malefactor seemed unsatisfactory, he 
told them to take Him and judge Him according to their law. 
Pilate's words forced the Jews to reveal their murderous purpose: 
'It is not lawful for us to put any man to death' (St. John xviii. 
verse 31). 

It would be difficult for us to explain this scrupulousness of 
Pilate if we did not know (from St. Matthew's account) of the 
message of Pilate's wife, warning him to have nothing to do with 
that righteous Man, for she had suffered many things in a dream 
because of Him. That message would make a deep impression on 
Pilate, since he must have known of the dream of Julius Caesar's 
wife, and how it might have saved the life of her husband had at- 
tention been paid to it. Pilate then went into the palace, and ques- 
tioned Jesus privately. The quiet dignity of the Prisoner's bear- 
ing and answers favourably affected the Roman. The Jews had evi- 
dently brought a charge of treason against Jesus, and Pilate's ques- 
tion, 'Art thou the King of the Jews?' (St. John xviii. verse 33), 
was connected with this charge. Jesus quickly made it plain to him 
that He was a spiritual, not an earthly. King. 

'Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice' (verse 37), that 
is to say, recognises My mandate as supreme, and is My subject. 

As a result of the private examination Pilate went out and told 
the accusers, T find in him no fault at all' (verse 38). This did not 
suit the chief priests and the multitude; they had already accused 
Him of perverting the people and refusing to give tribute to Caesar, 
a gross misrepresentation of His words on the tribute money. Now 
they urged that He stirred up all the people, beginning from' Galilee 
unto this place. At the word Galilee, Pilate saw an opportunity of 
shirking his responsibility : he was anxious to acquit Jesus, but he 
felt the difficulty. He asked if Jesus was a Galilean, and when he 
learned that He was, he sent Him to King Herod, to whose jurisdic- 
tion He belonged and who was in Jerusalem at that time. Herod 
was pleased at Pilate's courtesy in treating him as king over the 
Galileans, even when in Jerusalem. He was the Herod who had 
murdered John the Baptist, to keep his promise to the daughter 
of Herodias. He had heard of the fame of Jesus and had long 
wished to see Him'; he hoped also to see Him do a miracle. 
He asked many questions, but received no answer from the ma- 
jestic Prisoner, though the chief priests and scribes, who had 
come with the Prisoner to Herod, vehemently accused Him. Jesus 
would work no miracle to satisfy the king's curiosity, so Herod and 
his soldiers mocked Him, arraying Him in royal robes and sending 
Him back to Pilate. Thus Pilate was still left with the responsibility^ 



442 'ALL HAIL' 

though by his action he had made friends with Herod. Then Pilate 
thought of another loophole of escape. It was the custom of the 
Roman governor to release a criminal at the Passover, whomsoever 
the people wished. Pilate went out of the palace and offered, in 
accordance with his custom, to release Jesus to the people. 'Will ye 
that I release unto j^ou the King of the Jews?' (St. Mark xv. verse 
9) ; but, moved by the chief priests, who were active all along in their 
midst, they cried with one voice, 'Not this man, but Barabbas' (St. 
John xviii. verse 40). 

Barabbas was a notorious criminal, who for insurrection and mur- 
der was in prison. Pilate weakly asked what was to be done with 
the King of the Jews, and then arose, apparently for the first time, 
the formidable cry, 'Crucify him! crucify him!' (St. John xix. verse 
6). The chief priests no doubt raised the cry, but the multitude 
yelled it after them. Crucifixion had that horrible attraction which 
all public executions have for the rabble of a city, and stirred the 
lust of cruelty in an accentuated form, as being the most harrowing 
of all such spectacles. Pilate, after a few ineffectual efforts to 
make himself heard, crying, 'Why, what evil hath he done? I have 
found no cause of death in him' (St. Luke xxiii. verse 22), resorted 
to dumb show. He took water and washed his hands before the 
multitude, saying, T am innocent of the blood of this just person: 
see ye to it' (St. Matthew xxvii. verse 24). 'Then answered all the 
people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children' (verse 

25). 

The next step in our Lord's sufferings was the scourging, which 
St. John's narrative shows us was inflicted by Pilate as a punishment 
severe enough (he thought) to satisfy the Jews without crucifixion. 
Pilate had humoured the multitude by releasing Barabbas, and 
thought they might be satisfied with a lesser punishment than the 
death of Jesus. 'I will therefore chastise him, and let him go' (St. 
Luke xxiii. verse 22). Scourging was a savage torture; the scourge 
was loaded with metal and bone, to bruise and tear the flesh of the 
prisoner, who was naked to the waist and bound to a pillar during 
the punishment. 

The place of our Lord's scourging may perhaps be identified. 
In a subterranean chamber, discovered by Warren on what Ferguson 
holds to be the site of Antonia, Pilate's Prsetorium, 'stands a trun- 
cated column, no part of the construction, for the chamber is vaulted 
above the pillar, but just such a pillar as criminals would be tied 
to to be scourged. The chamber cannot be later than the time of 
Herod.' 

After the scourging followed a shocking scene in the guard-room 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 443 

of the Praetorium, which was probably suggested by the coarse jest 
of Herod and his soldiers, when they sent Jesus back, dressed up as 
a mock king. The whole body of soldiers had the Prisoner at their 
mercy in the guard-room, and they did with Him as they chose. 
They put on His head a crown of thorns, gathered probabl}^ from 
a thorn-bush in the garden of the Prsetorium, they put a purple 
robe upon His bleeding shoulders ; they put a reed, for a sceptre, 
in His right hand, and they knelt before Him and mocked Him, 
saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews ! and they smote him on the head 
with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees, wor- 
shipped him' (St. Mark xv. verses i8, 19). The whole band took 
part in this callous sport, and each time they came to Him and 
said, 'Hail, King of the Jews,' they smote Him wnth their hands, 
a savage blow on the face taking the place of the kiss of homage ; 
but Jesus bore it, as He bore all His sufferings, wnthout resistance 
and without anger, with patient fortitude and gentle silence. 

Pilate, who had come back into the palace to order the scourging, 
now must have found out what had been going on in the guard- 
room. This suggested to him a last appeal, by bringing out the Vic- 
tim of the fierce sport of the soldiers, and showing Him to H'is ene- 
mies as at once too pitiable and too insignificant for more serious 
punishment. 

'Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them. Behold 
I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in 
him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the 
purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them. Behold the man! When 
the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, say- 
ing. Crucify him, Crucify him. Pilate saith unto them. Take ye 
him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him' (St. John xix. 
verses 4-6). 

Pilate's words 'Behold the man' {Ecce Homo) were the expression 
of half-contemptuous pit}-, and he hoped that the sight of such 
bitter humiliation would awaken the same feeling in the spectators. 
But the chief priests and their officers, the moment they saw Him, 
anticipated any such outburst of pity with the loud cry, 'Crucify! 
crucify!' Nothing short of crucifixion, the death of a slave, would 
satisfy them. Pilate, disappointed and angry, told them to crucify 
Him themselves, which of course they had no power to do. The 
Jews met Pilate's challenge by stating their real reason for demand- 
ing the Prisoner's death. 

St. John xix. verse 7: 'The Jews answered him. We have a law, 
and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of 
God/ 



444 'ALL HAIL* 

Pilate had already recognised something mysterious and greater 

than man in Jesus, and what the Jews asserted deepened the doubts 
which our Lord's presence had inspired. 

'When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more 
afraid; and went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, 
Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then saith 
Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that 
I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? 
Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, 
except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered 
me unto thee hath the greater sin' (St. John xix. verses 8-11). 

The calm' dignity of the Prisoner's answer confirmed Pilate's fears, 
and he now actively sought to release Him. Thereupon the leaders 
of the Jews dropped the religious accusation and adopted a political 
one. They raised a loud simultaneous cry, Tf thou let this man go, 
thou art not Caesar's friend : whosoever maketh himself a king 
speaketh against Caesar' (verse 12). This amounted to the threat 
that they would accuse Pilate of disloyalty to the Emperor, if he did 
not crucify Jesus. This appeal to Pilate's fears of what a morose 
and suspicious tyrant like the Emperor Tiberius might do, was at 
once successful: he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judg- 
ment seat, and pointing to Jesus, said bitterly to the Jews, 'Behold 
your King!' (verse 14). But the priests had carried the people 
with them, and Pilate's words were received with the cry, 'Away 
with him, away with him, crucify him!' (verse 15). Pilate ut- 
tered a last reproach, 'Shall I crucify your King?' (verse 15). The 
chief priests, the official organs of the Divine Government, replied 
in words that were the formal abdication of the Messianic King in 
favour of the foreign Emperor, 'We have no king but Caesar' (verse 
15). Pilate pronounced no sentence; the chief priests were simply 
allowed to have their own way. They were the real executioners 
and practically carried out the foreign law, by the hands of the 
Roman soldiers. It was probably about six or half-past six in the 
morning when Pilate delivered up Jesus to be crucified. 

St. John xix. verse 14 : 'And it was the preparation of the passoven 
and about the sixth hour.' 

The soldiers, after they had taken Jesus away, amused them- 
selves at His expense by a second mockery of the condemned King. 

St. Mark xv. verses 20, 21 : 'And when they had mocked him, 
they took off the purple from him, and put his own clothes on him, 
and led him out to crucify him. And they compel one Simon a 
Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of 
Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 445 

St. John's account is that He went forth (that is, started) bear- 
ing the cross for Himself, but St. Mark's account tells us that after 
He had gone some distance, He sank from weakness beneath the 
burden, and therefore it was transferred to Simon of Cyrene, a 
passer-by. 

There was evidently a considerable interval in which the second 
mockery by the soldiers took place, between six or half-past six, 
when He was delivered up to be crucified, and nine o'clock (the 
third hour) the time of the actual crucifixion according to St. Mark, 
'And it was the third hour, and they crucified him' (St. Mark xv. 
verse 25). 

As the sad procession made its way from the Prsetorium to Golgo- 
tha (Calvary, 'the skull'), a spot outside the city where the crucifix- 
ion was to be carried out, an incident occurred which shows how 
our Lord was thinking of and sorrowing for others, and not for 
Himself: the incident is recorded in St. Luke's Gospel in chapter 
xxiii. verses 27-29 : 

'And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, 
which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto 
them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for 
yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are com- 
ing, in which they shall say. Blessed are the barren, and the wombs 
that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.' 

Jesus, about to die an agonising death Himself, mourned, not for 
Himself, but for the destruction that awaited Jerusalem and its in- 
habitants at the hands of the Romans, the very people whom the Jews 
were compelling to crucify their true Messiah on a charge of sedi- 
tion. 

The crowd that accompanied the Roman guard seems to have in- 
cluded not only the rabble of the city, eager for the spectacle of a 
crucifixion, but the chief priests and other leaders of the people, 
who had clamoured for a death sentence and had intimidated Pilate 
into submission. 

When the soldiers and their prisoners reached Golgotha, the usual 
preparations were made to crucify Jesus and the two malefactors 
who were to share His fate. A stupefying draught, 'wine mingled 
with myrrh' (St. Mark xv. verses 23), was refused by Jesus, 
who was resolved to suffer and die with all His powers intact. 
Shrieks and groans and curses probably came from the two rob- 
bers, the usual accompaniment of the cruel pain as the nails were 
driven through hands and feet, but from Jesus, as the nails were 
driven in, came what is known as the first word from' the Cross, a 



446 'ALL HAIL' 

prayer of forgiving love : 'Father, forgive them ; for they know 
not what they do' (St. Luke xxiii. verse 34). 

This utterance of unselfish compassion for sinners and calm cour- 
age under keen suffering fitly introduces that great Revelation of 
Incarnate Love which is offered to our gaze in the records of the 
Crucifixion. 

The Cross on which Christ hung was placed between the two 
crosses on which were crucified the two robbers. The title (jitulus) 
was a piece of wood covered with white gypsum, on which the 
sufferer's offence was written in letters of black; the title was nailed 
to the upright post of wood, the cross proper, which reached not 
more than seven and a half to nine feet above the ground in which 
it was planted. The cross-bar was generally carried by the con- 
demned man to the place of execution. During crucifixion the vic- 
time was quite close to the ground, within easy sight and hearing 
of all that went on around him. 

St, John xix. verses 19-22 : 'And Pilate wrote a title, and put it 
on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH 
THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the 
Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the 
city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then 
said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Wixite not. The King of 
the Jews ; but that he said, I am the King of the Jews. Pilate an- 
swered. What I have written I have written.' 

Pilate wrote the inscription himself, and had it placed on the 
Cross as some slight revenge on the chief priests, who had forced 
him to condemn an innocent man. He wrote the inscription in three 
languages, in order that all the visitors to the feast might be able to 
read it. The chief priests felt the imputation on themselves, and 
asked him to change the inscription. Pilate, pleased at having hurt 
those who had hurt him, and no longer in danger of denunciation 
to Tiberius, curtly refused their request, and the form of his 
answer is characteristically Roman. 

A word may here be said about Pontius Pilate. He was the 
Roman Governor, or rather Procurator of Judsea, the territory 
from which Archelaus was deposed, a.d. 6, which included Judaea, 
Samaria, and Idumsea. His official residence was Herod's palace 
in Csesarea, but he usually went up to Jerusalem for the feast. He 
was appointed in the twelfth year of Tiberius, and continued in 
office ten years, that is to say, he came into office when John the 
Baptist appeared, remained in office through our Lord's' ministry, 
and saw the establishment of the Christian Church in Judaea. The 
character of Pilate, as described in the Gospels, fierce and haughty, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 447 

yet weak and vacillating, is confirmed by what we know of him 
from other sources ; so is the hearty dislike which existed between 
him' and the Jews. We learn from Josephus that Pilate's rule was 
brought to an end by his savage attempt to suppress, as seditious, 
an innocent movement of the Samaritans. Pilate attacked them 
and killed many; therefore the Samaritans appealed to the Legate 
in Syria, Vitellius, who ordered Pilate to answer at Rome before 
the Emperor the complaints against him. Before Pilate reached 
Rome, Tiberius was dead, and Pilate disappears from history, though 
his name comes up frequently in fanciful traditions and legends. 

That Pilate knew something of the mighty works of Jesus and 
His holy life, before He was brought to the Prsetorium, seems prob- 
able from the readiness with which he accepted the Prisoner's ex- 
planation of the entirely unworldly nature of His Kingdom. His 
wife's dream, and the message she sent, shows that she possessed 
such knowledge, and was fully convinced that Jesus was a righteous 
man. The end of the Roman who judged our Lord is unknown, 
but the end of the Jew who betrayed Him is recorded by St. Mat- 
thew in chapter xxvii. verses 3-8 : 

'Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw he was con- 
demned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of 
silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that 
I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, what is that 
to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in 
the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the 
chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for 
to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And 
they took counsel, and brought with them the potter's field to 
bury srangers in. (Wherefore that field was called. The field of 
blood, unto this day.' 

The pangs of conscience which drove the wretched man to sui- 
cide, and the genuineness of his grief, have suggested to some stu- 
dents that Judas expected that by some exercise of the supernatural 
power, which he knew his Master possessed. He would defeat the 
attempt to arrest Him. The gentleness of our Lord's remonstrances 
with Judas points to the fact that He was ready to forgive, and only 
wanted Judas to awaken to the heinousness of his sin and ask for 
forgiveness. At the present day there is still shown to visitors to 
Jerusalem a piece of waste ground, barren and desolate, shunned 
by every passer-by and as well known as The Field of Blood' to-day 
as when the Gospel was first written. 

To return to the Crucifixion. As a crucified man was not likely 



448 'ALL HAIL' 

to die for many hours, the soldiers set to work to divide the gar- 
ments they had stripped from Jesus, and each of the quaternion took 
a part, but the seamless coat they cast lots for in order to avoid 
spoiling it by tearing it in four pieces. When they had done this 
they sat down and watched Him there. The attitude of the soldiers 
was the not unnatural one of professional callousness: but there 
were other bystanders whose attitude was far more horrible, far 
more trying to the Sufferer. These were the chief priests and the 
scribes and elders, and their supporters, who had come out from 
Jerusalem to gloat over the sufferings of the hated Prophet of 
Nazareth. To them the revenge seemed satisfying and sweet, and 
they enjoyed it to the full. Jesus could hear every word thy said, 
and they made their words like knives to cut Him to the quick. 

'And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and 
saying. Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three 
days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the 
cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes 
and elders, said. He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he 
be King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we 
will believe him. He trusted in God ; let him deliver him now, if he 
will have him : for he said, I am the Son of God' (St. Matthew xxvii. 
verses 39-43)- 

Even His fellow-sufferers joined in the chorus of ridicule and 
abuse: the soldiers too were moved to imitate the other mockers. 

'And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering 
him vinegar, and saying, If thou be the king of the Jews, save thy- 
self (St. Luke xxiii. verses s^> 37)- 

The mocking and ribaldry were borne with the same gentle pa- 
tience as His other sufferings, and this wonderful gentleness and 
sweetness produced its effect. 

'And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, 
saying. If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other an- 
^vering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou 
are in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we re- 
ceive the due reward of our deeds : but this man hath done nothing 
amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou 
comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say 
unto thee. To day shalt thou be with me in paradise' (St. Luke 
xxiii. verses 39-43). 

This is the second word from the Cross, a saying of comfort, 
not only to the penitent thief, but also to all generations since. The 
words 'To day shalt thou be with me in paradise' are a declaration 
that the believer's soul at death passes into the presence of His 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 449 

Saviour, and that the intermediate state includes for the believer the 
joyful experience of entering into the joy of his Lord. To this 
agree the words of the risen Lord to St. John, preserved in Revela- 
tion i. verse i8 : 'I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the 
unseen world and of death.' That St. Paul held this view is evident, 
for he speaks of death as 'to depart and to be with Christ' (Philip- 
pians i. verse 23). 

But our Lord was not left to suffer the agony of the Cross without 
the blessed consciousness of the presence of human love : His 
Mother and the faithful disciple whom He loved were there. St. 
John alone had been true to his Lord before the High Priest and 
before Pilate, and now on the Cross : and to his Gospel we owe 
the knowledge of much of what took place. 

'Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his 
mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. 
When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, 
whom he loved, he saith unto his mother. Woman, behold thy son! 
Then saith he to the disciple. Behold thy mother! And from' that 
hour that disciple took her unto his own home' (St. John xix. verses 

25-27)- 

Jesus had a twofold purpose in these words to His mother, and 
to his bosom friend, St. John, which are known as the third saying 
or word from the Cross. His ultimate purpose, no doubt, was to 
provide for the welfare and happiness of His mother by giving her 
a new son, whose happiness was also enhanced by taking his Lord's 
mother for his own. His immediate purpose was that John should 
remove His mother from the terrible spectacle of the Crucifixion 
during the remaining hours of His extreme mental suffering, as 
John appears to have done. If, as seems probable, the brethren of 
Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former marriage, and if John was 
the son of the sister of the Lord's mother, who is identified by St. 
Matthew with Salome, then John was nearest to the Blessed Vir- 
gin by blood relationship, and the difficulty of his being chosen in 
preference to the brethren of the Lord disappears. 

And now the ministry of Jesus to others was ended, and our at- 
tention is concentrated on the Lord Himself. A great darkness 
came on, which lasted for three hours. 

'And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness 
over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, 
and the veil of the tem.ple was rent in the midst' (St. Luke xxiii. 
verses 44, 45). 

It came on at the sixth hour, that is twelve o'clock. This deep 
darkness at noonday may be regarded as Nature's way of sympa- 



450 'ALL HAIL* 

thising with Nature's Lord. This was the most awful period of 
suffering, and it was to save His mother the sight of this, that He 
had sent her away with St. John. The only measure of that awful 
suffering He endured while the weight of the world's sins pressed 
upon Him is the awe-inspiring cry which broke from Him, under 
the awful sense of utter abandonment and issolation : 'Eloi, Eloi, 
LAMA SABACHTHANi? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me?' (St. Mark xv. verse 34). Or to tran- 
slate the original Aramaic of the cry more literally, 'Wliy didst 
thou forsake me?' This utterance of supreme anguish is the fourth 
word from the Cross, and belongs to the period of darkness towards 
its close. 

The next word came when the darkness was over, T thirst,' the 
fifth word from the Cross. 

'After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, 
that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was 
set a vessel full of vinegar; and they filled a spunge with vinegar, 
and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth' (St. John xix. 
verses 28, 29). 

This utterance of physical suffering was in itself an expression 
of relief from the greater suffering of spirit which was now over. 
Apparently one of the soldiers, touched with compassion, offered 
this slight refreshment which the Lord accepted as the offering of 
reverent kindness from one whom His bearing upon the Cross may 
have half won. 

The last suffering for sin had been endured : the life-work was 
done: Jesus was ready to die. 

'When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is 
finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost' (St. John 
xix. verse 30). 

This cry of triumph, Tt is finished,' is a single word in the 
original. This is the sixth word from the Cross, but is the last 
recorded by St. John. St. Luke gives the seventh word, which 
our Lord spoke in dying: 'Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit' ( St. Luke xxiii, verse 46) ; and St. Matthew adds : 'And, be- 
hold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the 
bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent' (St. Matthew 
xxvii. verse 51). 

And so the only Perfect Life on earth was finished, and .the Per- 
fect Victory won. Of His own free choice our Lord gave up His 
Life, as He had said : 'I have power to lay it down, and I have 
power to take it again' (St. John x. verse 18). 

The Jews thought it was finished in a very different sense : they 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 451 

thought they had finally got rid of this Prophet of Nazareth. They 
had carried through successfully their daring conspiracy of getting 
Him tried, condemned, and executed the same day, and now they 
had only to make His death certain, and get His Body buried away 
out of sight. 

The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the 
bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for 
that sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs 
might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came 
the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which 
was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw 
that he was dead already, they brake not his legs : but one of the 
soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out 
blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record 
is true : and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe' 
(St. John xix. verses 31-35). 

The blood and water which flowed from the pierced side was, 
perhaps, a sign of life in death, a sign of the beginning of the 
change completed in the Resurrection. Our Lord in dying provided 
for the supply of the virtue of His human life, of which blood was 
the symbol, and also for the outpouring of His spiritual life, of 
which water was the symbol. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Gospels (The Burial — The Resurrection — The Appear- 
ances OF THE First Easter Day — The Appearances of the 
Forty Days — The Ascension). 

The Crucifixion, the narrative of which we have followed through 
the four Gospels, was now over, and the crucified 'King of the Jews' 
hung dead between the crucified thieves. Already the serene majesty 
of His bearing upon the Cross had produced lasting effects on some 
of the onlookers. The centurion in command of the soldiers who 
carried out. the execution, was so impressed by all he saw that the 
involuntary confession burst from his lips, Truly this was the Son 
of God' (St. Matthew xxvii. verse 54). Two of His secret disciples, 
both men of high position and wealth, who had not had the courage 
openly to confess their discipleship in His lifetime, were moved by 
His death fearlessly to avow their discipleship and their devotion to 
their master's memory. Joseph of Arimathaea went boldly to Pilate, 
and asked for the body of Jesus. Nicodemus, who had formerly 
come to Jesus by night, came now in broad daylight to assist at His 
burial, bringing a rich man's costly offering, a compound of the gum 
of the myrrh tree and of the fragrant powder of aloe-wood, of no 
less than one hundred pounds weight, in which to encase the whole 
body, in the Jewish — as distinguished from the Egyptian — method of 
embalming. All they could do now was to honour the sacred Body 
of their Master, and that they did. Theirs was a love quickened into 
intensity by the consciousness of the supreme worth of their Master 
and the hopeless sorrow of their irreparable loss. 

'And .... Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, 
but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might 
take away the body of Jesus : and Pilate gave him leave. He came 
therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nico- 
denius, which at the first came to Jesus at night, and brought a 
mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then 
took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the 
spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place 
where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a 
new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they 
Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepul- 
chre was nigh at hand' (St. John xix. verses 38-42). 

452 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 453 

If Jesns had been simply a claimant to the Messiaship whose 
claim had ended in defeat and death, our narrative might close here, 
or rather, there would have been no narrative at all, for there 
would have been no Christian Church and no New Testament, 
the handiwork of that Church. Jesus, in establishing the Kingdom 
of God, had founded His Church, but the members of His King- 
dom, at the time of His death, had no intelligent understanding of 
the nature of the Kingdom, nor of the requirements of member- 
ship. The old materialistic conception of the Kingdom still held 
sway in their minds. As lately as the Thursday night at the Last 
Supper when our Lord instituted the Great Sacrament, there had 
been a contention among them which should be accounted greatest. 
Even the most spiritual of them as yet knew as little what manner 
of spirit they were of as when some time before this the Sons of 
Thunder wished to call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable 
Samaritan villagers. As a matter of fact the condition of mind 
in the disciples of Jesus after their Lord's death was pitiable in the 
extreme. They had trusted that He was the Messiah sent by 
God, that 'it was he who should redeem Israel* (St. Luke xxiv. 
verse 21) ; but the most passionate Messianic hopes could not sur- 
vive those crushing experiences. Him whom they expected to found 
the Kingdom of God for Israel and to reign over it gloriously, they 
had seen taken and tried like a common malefactor. They had 
seen H'im in the high priest's palace, condemned for blasphemy 
by 'the assembly of the elders of the people', spat upon, buffeted, 
smitten with the palms of their hands, by the ecclesiastical heads 
of the nation. They had seen Him, after the scourging and mock- 
ery and ill-usage of the Roman soldiers, bleeding and exhausted, 
staggering under the weight of His Cross. They had seen Him 
hanging, nailed on His Cross, between the crucified thieves, chal- 
lenged by His taunting enemies to come down from the Cross if 
He were the Christ, and apparently unable to do so. They had 
seen Him die at last and His Body laid in the tomb where all their 
high hopes were buried with Him'. It was plain to them He must 
have made a mistake. Holy and good and mighty miracle-worker 
though He was. He could not have been the Christ, the Son of the 
living God ; for after all. He was dead and His kingdom had 
perished with its King. 

When Joseph of Arimathsea after the burial 'rolled a great stone 
to the door of the sepulchre, and departed' (St. Matthew xxvii. 
verse 60), he left Mary Magdalene there and the other Mary sitting 
over against the sepulchre. The two broken-hearted women, sitting 
desolate in view of the tomb, fairly represent the despair of the 



454 'ALL HAIL' 

whole body of disciples. The burial of the Master was the burial 
of their last hope, and soon the great stone was sealed fast, and 
the chief priests' guard made the sepulchre sure. How the Apostles 
and the other disciples passed that terrible Sabbath-day of utter 
darkriess and disillusionment, who shall say? Some of the women 
found comfort in the very womanly planning of a last service to 
Him they loved ; and the only service they could think of was to 
complete the honour done to all that remained of Him, His dead 
Body, by anointing it with spices to repel the approaches of decay. 

Late on the Sabbath-day two of them came to view the sepulchre, 
eager to begin their work of reverence and love, one of whom', ap- 
parently the leader in this good work, was Mary Magdalene, the 
last at the tomb after the burial on Friday, the first at the tomb on 
Saturday afternoon. The spices were not ye bought and could not 
be bought till the Sabbath-day was over, at six o'clock on Satur- 
day evening. 

'And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary 
the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that 
they might come and anoint him' (St. Mark xvi. verse i). 

Then very early on the Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene, still 
the leader, with Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and 
other women, set out for the sepulchre in the thick darkness, not yet 
thinning into twilight. Mary Magdalene hurried on before the 
others and arrived while it was yet dark at the sepulchre. She saw 
the great stone had been removed, and hurried away at once to 
tell Peter and John. We now give St. Mark's account of the ex- 
periences of the other women, reserving St. John's account of 
Mary Magdalene's experiences till later. 

'And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they 
came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said 
among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door 
of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone 
was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the 
sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed 
in a long white garment; and they were 'affrighted. And he said 
unto them. Be not affrighted : ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was 
crucified : he is risen ; he is not here : behold the place where they 
laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he 
goeth before you into Galilee : there shall ye see him, as he said 
unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from- the sepulchre; 
for they trembled and were amazed : neither said they anything 
to any man; for they were afraid' (St. Mark xvi. verses 2-8). 

One might have imagined the women would have been talking 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 455 

about their dead Master, but the simple record tells of a womanly 
concentration of attention on the details of the task in hand, and one 
feels that this absorption in the practical difficulty of moving the 
stone is perfectly true to nature. To these same women a little 
later (after the appearance to Mary Magdalene) an appearance of 
the Lord was granted, recorded by St. Matthew alone. 

'And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, 
saying. All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and wor- 
shipped him. Then said Jesus unto them. Be not afraid: go tell 
my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me' 
(St. Matthew xxviii. verese 9, 10). 

Now let us turn to St, John's account of what happened to Mary 
Magdalene after she arrived at the tomb : 

'The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when 
it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away 
from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, 
and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, 
They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know 
not where they have laid him. Peter therefore went forth, and that 
other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both to- 
gether : and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the 
sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen 
clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter fol- 
lowing Him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes 
lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen 
clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in 
also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he 
saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he 
must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again 
unto their own home. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weep- 
ing: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepul- 
chre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and 
the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say 
unto her. Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them. Because 
they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have 
laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and 
saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith 
unto her. Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, 
supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him. Sir, if thou have 
borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take 
him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and 
saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto 
her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but 



456 ' ALL HAIL ' 

go to my brethren, and say unto them', I ascend unto my Father, 
and your Father; to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene 
came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that 
he had spoken these things unto her' (St. John xx. verses 1-18). 

The record about 'that other disciple' in the eighth verse, that 'he 
saw and believed,' is St. John's record about himself. The mean- 
ing of 'believed' is a little difficult, but probably the spiritual insight 
of the beloved disciple read the threefold sign, of the stone removed, 
the tomb empty, the grave-clothes laid out and the napkin wrapped 
together by itself, and leaped to the right conclusion, that the Lord 
was somehow alive. It was Mary's love for her Master that kept 
her by the tomb after the two Apostles had gone. She was too 
much absorbed in her own thoughts to take notice of the vision of 
the angels. All she hoped to discover now was the dead Body of 
her Master, which she supposed had been taken away. So dear still 
to her was that Master whose marvellous spiritual influence had 
awakened her higher self and raised her above the power of sin, 
that she felt that even the place where His dead Body had lain was 
nearer and dearer to her than any other. Sometimes by a kind of 
unconscious sympathy of souls, one half perceives the presence of a 
loved person without seeing him or even hearing his approach. So 
it may have been with Mary on this occasion. 

This was the Lord's first appearance to any one after His Resur- 
rection, and was granted to simple love ; and the lesson is that love 
is the thing the Lord most prizes, — love, the motive-power of de- 
voted service. 

The mystery of the glorified body is touched upon in our Lord's 
message to His disciples: 'I ascend' (or rather, 'I am ascending'), 
He said. That is, the Ascension had begim although forty days had 
still to pass and many appearances had to take place before it was 
completed. Mary Magdalene hastened with the good news to the 
disciples, but they believed her not. 

'And she went and told them that had been with him, as they 
mourned and wept. And they, when they had heard that he was 
alive, and had been seen of her, believed not' (St. Mark xvi. verses 
10, 11). 

A very fully reported appearance of this first day recorded by 
St. Luke alone is that to two disciples, one of whom may very well 
have been Luke himself, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, on 
the road to Emmaus. Certainly the account comes, and comes, it 
seems, immediately, from one of the two, so vivid is the narrative 
and so manifest the marks of the eye-witness. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 457 

Mary had not recognised the risen Lord till He made Himself 
known, and so it was with these two disciples. 

'And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called 
Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. 
And they talked together of all these things which had happened. 
And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and rea- 
soned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their 
eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said 
unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye 
have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, 
whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him. Art thou only 
a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are 
come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them. What 
things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, 
which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all 
the people : and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him 
to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted 
that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel : and beside 
all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, 
and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which 
were early at the sepulchre ; and when they found not his body, they 
came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said 
that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went 
to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said : but 
him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of 
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ 
to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And be- 
ginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in 
all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew 
nigh unto the village, whither they went : and he made as though 
he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, 
Abide with us : for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. 
And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat 
at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave 
to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he 
vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not 
our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and 
while he opened to us the scriptures?' (St. Luke xxiv. verses 
13-32). 

After this, there was an appearance to Peter, of which we have 
no account, what passed between the Risen Lord and the disciple 
who had denied Him being too sacred for the public ear. The two 
to whom the Risen Lord had revealed Himself at Emmaus hurried 



458 ' ALL HAIL- ' 

back with the news, and found the Apostles gathered together, and 
the other disciples with them, and were greeted with the good news 
that the Lord had appeared to Simon Peter. The two disciples 
from Emmaus told the others their wonderful experiences, and how 
the Lord had made Himself known in the Breaking of the Bread. 
The 'Breaking of the Bread,' it may be observed, is the expression 
used to signify the Lord's Supper, and the way in which our Lord 
blessed and broke bread at Emmaus, and so made Himself known, 
suggests that the breaking of bread at Emmaus was a sacramental 
meal. 

The fifth appearance, the last on the Day of Resurrection, was 
that which took place in the Upper Room at Jerusalem, the sacred 
last meeting-place of the disciples and their Lord. St. John and 
St. Luke both give accounts of this appearance. St. John, of course, 
as one who was present, is the higher authority, though St. Luke's 
account records important details omitted by St. John, who pur- 
posely avoided the words and deeds already recorded by another. 

'Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, 
when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for 
fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto 
them. Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto 
them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when 
they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again. Peace be unto 
you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when 
he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Re- 
ceive ye (rather, 'take ye') the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye 
remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye re- 
tain, they are retained' (St. John xx. verses 19-23). 

The point peculiar to St. John's account of this appearance to the 
disciples as a society (the Ten and others with them) is the gift 
of the Holy Ghost, and its application in giving or withholding the 
power of the new life. This gift of absolution was to the whole 
Church. It is the commission of the whole Christian society. The 
gift of remission of sins comes from Christ, and it is the Church's 
business to apply it to all. He who accepts the Gospel receives 
with it remission of sins, and he who rejects it, rejects that re- 
mission. To set man free from sin and to declare his forgiveness 
is the duty of the Church in general ; and of the clergy as the 
Church's representatives in particular. St. Luke's account adds 
some vivid details, particularly the dismay with which the disciples 
first saw what they thought was a ghost, and the way in which the 
Lord took away their fear. 

'And as thy thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 459 

and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified 
and affrighted, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And he said 
unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your 
hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle 
me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. 
And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his 
feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he 
said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece 
of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat 
before them' (St. Luke xxiv. verses 36-43). 

The next appearance took place a week after, and is recorded 
only by St. John. 

'But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with 
them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto 
him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them', Except I 
shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into 
the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not 
believe. And after eight days again his disciples were within, and 
Thomas with them : then came Jesus, the. doors being shut, and 
stood in the midst, and said. Peace be unto you. Then saith he to 
Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands ; and reach 
hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side : and be not faithless, but 
believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him', My Lord and 
my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen 
me, thou hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed' (St. John xx. verses 24-29). 

The words in which our Lord offered Thomas the proofs he had 
required in the very language in which he had uttered his doubt 
convinced him of His omnipresence and His Divinity, and Thomas 
thereupon uttered the highest confession of that Divinity hitherto 
recorded, 'My Lord and my God.' This must have pleased our 
Lord, who always desired His disciples to discover for themselves 
the facts about His Person, His Messiahship, and His Divinity. 

St. John gives the account of another appearance, the seventh, 
peculiar to his Gospel, in the twenty-first chapter, which is a sort 
of appendix to the Gospel ; an appendix or epilogue rendered neces- 
sary by the circulation of a saying of the Lord as to St. John : 'Then 
went this saying abroad among the bretheren, that that disciple 
should not die : yet Jesus said not unto him. He shall not die ; but 
If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee' (St. John 
xxi. verse 23). 

The disciples had by this time returned to their earthly work 
in Galilee as fishermen on the lake, though before the Ascension they 



46o 'ALL HAIL' 

came again to Jerusalem. All teaching given by the Risen Lord is 
of such supreme importance that His revelation to Peter of what 
constitutes the great qualification for His service which is the 
measure of true discipleship must be given in full. 

'After these things Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples 
at the sea of Tiberias ; and on this wise shewed he himself. There 
were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathan- 
ael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other 
of his disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They 
say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered 
into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing. But 
when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore : but the 
disciples knew not that it was Jesus, Then Jesus saith unto them. 
Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he 
said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye 
shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to 
draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom 
Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon 
Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, 
(for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. And the 
other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from 
land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with 
fishes. As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals 
there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them'. Bring 
of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and 
drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and 
three : and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. 
Jesus saith unto them. Come and dine. And none of the the disciples 
durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. 
Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish like- 
wise. This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his 
disciples, after that he was risen from the dead. So when they had 
dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me more than these? He saith unto him. Yea, Lord; thou 
knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He 
saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest 
thou me? He saith unto him. Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love 
thee. He saith unto him. Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the 
third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was 
grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? 
And he said unto him. Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou knowest 
that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him. Feed my sheep. Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee, When thou was young, thou girdedst thy- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 461 

self, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be 
old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, 
and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he signifying 
by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken 
this, he saith unto him. Follow me. Then Peter, turning about, 
seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned 
on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth 
thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this 
man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, 
what is that to thee? follow thou me' (St. John xxi. verse 1-22). 

In this appearance the Lord reveals Himself as present to men, 
engaged in the work of life. He does not awaken recognition in 
the eyes of His disciples, either by His appearance, or by His voice. 
He is recognised only in the results that follow obedience. Our 
Lord in His risen Body was not easily recognised: Mary Magda- 
lene did not know Him till H'e called her by her name. The dis- 
ciples, on the road to Emmaus, listened long to His expositions of 
the Scriptures without realising who it was, till He made Himself 
known in the Breaking of the Bread. We can, indeed, trace a 
growing difficulty of recognition, when we remember that the seven 
disciples at the lake had all of them probably seen Him more than 
once, and were therefore conscious that He might appear at any 
moment. The explanation seems to be that H'e was passing grad- 
ually further and further from the conditions of the earthly life to 
the conditions of the heavenly. His message to His brethren, 
through Mary Magdalene, on the morning of the Resurrection, 
declared this: 'I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, and 
to my God, and your God' (St. John xx. verse 17). That is to 
say, the change, of which the visible Ascension was the symbol, had 
begim on the first of the great forty days, and was to go on till their 
close. 

The eighth appearance also took place in Galilee. It differed 
from the other appearances in this — that the other appearances were 
not expected, but this was by appointment. There was an obvious 
reason for this. All the disciples were to be given an opportunity of 
attending. The purpose of our Lord, as revealed by His action, 
was to give to His Church the great commission to evangelise the 
whole world. As regards the 'some' who 'doubted,' it is plain they 
could not have been of the eleven, who had seen the Lord repeatedly. 

'Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a moun- 
tain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, 
they worshipped him : but some doubted. And Jesus came and 
spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and 



462 'ALL HAIL' 

in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you : and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. 
Amen' (St. Matthew xxviii. verses 16-20). 

This appearance is probably to be identified with one recorded 
in the earliest mention in the New Testament of the appearances 
of the Risen Lord, which is to be found in i Corinthians xv. verse 
6: 'After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; 
of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some have 
fallen asleep.' 

It is clear that an appearance to so large a number of persons as 
five hundred may reasonably be identified with the one appearance 
recorded to have been by appointment; the one, moreover, at which 
the missionary character of the Christian Church was given, and 
the Promise of a Real Presence with the Church even to the end 
of the world. As the Church at Jerusalem numbered only one 
hundred and twenty persons, the five hundred must have included 
a large number of Galileans ; and probably the appointment for the 
appearance took place in Galilee, because the great majority of the 
disciples were Galileans. The Revised Version brings out the mean- 
ing of some of our Lord's words much more clearly, and may 
therefore be added here : 'Go ye therefore, and make disciples of 
all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost' Here we have in the missionary 
charter of the Church the duty and the formula of baptism, contain- 
ing the doctrine of the Trinity in its plainest shape. Observe the 
singular 'name,' not names, and that it is 'into,' not in. This, if we 
accept the identification, is the eighth appearance. 

The ninth appearance is merely mentioned by St. Paul, and comes 
after the appearance to the five hundred: 'After that, he was seen 
of James; then of all the Apostles' (i Corinthians xv. verse 7). 

The appearance to James is followed in this passage by the 
appearance to all the Apostles, which we may identify with the 
appearance which immediately preceded our Lord's Ascension, and 
closed the appearances of the Great Forty Days. It is indeed very 
probable there were more appearances than are recorded ; and this 
is, at least, suggested by St. John's words : 'And many other signs 
truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not 
written in this book' (St. John xx. verse 30). These signs were 
done apparently after the Resurrection. 

Be that as it may, the last recorded appearance of the forty 
days ended in the Ascension. After the Lord had fully confirmed 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 463 

the Apostles' faith in the Resurrection by many appearances and 
much teaching, after He had taught them their duty as a society, 
and their duty as individuals, and so prepared them for the fulfil- 
ment of the promise of the Holy Spirit, He appeared to them and 
conversed with them for the last time. In His other appearances, 
attention is drawn to the way He came. In this last appearance, 
attention is- concentrated on the way He departed; and that depart- 
ure is what we call the Ascension. This last appearance and the 
final departure took place quite close to Jerusalem. The spot gen- 
erally assigned to the Ascension is a summit of the range called the 
Mount of Olives, about three-quarters of a mile from the site of 
the Temple. Here our Lord talked with His disciples at the end 
of the forty days. During that period He had appeared to them 
repeatedly and proved to them that His Presence when invisible 
was as real as when they saw Him {e.g., His words to Thomas) ; 
He had prepared their minds for the Ascension by such utterances as 
the words spoken to Mary Magdalene : 'Touch me not ; for I am not 
yet ascended' (St. John xx. verse 17), which plainly implied that 
when He had entered on the life, to which the Ascension was the 
doorway, they would be really, because spiritually, closer to Him 
and more in touch with Him than ever. Indeed, the preparation had 
begun at a much earlier date, during His ministry on earth, in such 
utterances as we find in St. John vi. verse 62 : 'What and if ye shall 
see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? And in St. 
John iii. verse 13 : 'And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he 
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in 
heaven.' 

From the first the Incarnation carried with it the necessity, alike 
of the Passion and of the Resurrection and of the Ascension: the 
elevation on the cross was the direct way to the elevation on the 
right hand of God, of which the visible Ascension was the symbol. 

The Ascension is very briefly described in the two Gospels that 
record it, in St. Luke's and in St. Mark's ; but a fuller description 
is given in the Acts of the Apostles, which we shall deal with in its 
place. in the next chapter. St. Luke's account in the Gospel is found 
in chapter xxiv. verses 50-53 : 

'And he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, 
and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he 
was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they wor- 
shipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were 
continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.' 

The account is short, but marvellously pregnant and impressive. 
The last look the disciples had of the Lord was in the attitude of 



464 'ALL HAIL' 

blessing. He left them in order to bless them, as He had said. 
'Nevertheless I tell yoii the truth; it is expedient for you that I 
go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you' (St. John xvi. verse 

7). 

While He blessed them He was carried up into heaven, and the 
immediate effect was that they worshipped Him as God. 

The result of the forty days' revelation was seen in the way the 
disciples accepted the change from the visible manifestation to 
an invisible spiritual presence. Joyful and thankful worship was 
the immediate response of the Christian community to the enthrone- 
ment of their King at God's right hand by His Ascension. 

The other account in the Gospels is found in St. Mark xvi. 
verses 19, 20: 'So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he 
was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 
And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working 
with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.' 

These verses, from the supplement of St. Mark's Gospel, record 
a further experience that came to the disciples after the Ascension. 
They went forth and preached the Gospel everywhere, as the Risen 
Lord had commanded when He appeared to them on the mountain 
in Galilee, and found that the Ascended Lord was with them, a real 
Presence which showed itself in the wonderful results that attended 
their preaching, and in the joy and love that were the distinguishing 
characteristics of the struggling and persecuted Church, which 
not only called itself, but felt itself H'is Body, because it felt the 
tide of the New Life, His Life, pulse through its veins. 

The Ascension is the last event recorded in the Gospels, and the 
first event recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. It is the transi- 
tion from one dispensation to another; it is the gateway by which 
Christ went to the Father, in order that in the Spirit He might be 
with His Church always, even to the end of the world. His local 
and temporal presence was changed to a spiritual and universal 
Presence ; and this change in order to interpret it to the disciples' 
sense-bound understanding was represented sacramentally in the 
visible elevation of the glorified humanity of the Lord, in His vis- 
ible Ascent heavenward till 'a cloud received him out of their 
sight' (Acts i. verse 9). 



CHAPTER XXX. 

The Acts of the Apostles (The Ascension — Pentecost — The 
Sanhedrin — Stephen — Philip — The Conversion of Saul — 
Cornelius — Paul and Barnabas — The First Missionary 
Journey — Council at Jerusalem — Second Missionary Jour- 
ney. 

We come now to the Acts of the Apostles, which contains the 
history of the building of the Christian Church, the laying of the 
foundations of which we have read about in the Gospels. The 
Apostles whose acts are the subject of the book, are for the main 
part of the narrative St. Peter and St. Paul. About St. John and 
St. James we learn very little. ,We gain from the Acts of the 
Apostles most valuable knowledge of the growth of the Christian 
Church, from -its small beginnings at Jerusalem after the Ascension, 
to its expansion all over the Roman world, in Palestine, Syria, Asia 
Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy; we learn, moreover, some- 
thing of the nature of the Apostles' teaching from the many and 
interesting reports of their sermons and addresses. The Acts of 
the Apostles was written by St. Luke, the author of the Gospel that 
bears his name. The purpose of his Gosepl was to describe ac- 
curately, from trustworthy reports and documents, the life and 
teaching of the Lord Jesus. The purpose of his book of the Acts 
of the Apostles was to describe, from the best sources he could 
comniand, the growth of the Christian Church in the Apostles' days. 

St. Luke had the gifts of an historian, and the historian's con- 
cern for accuracy. His sources of information, for the main body 
of his work, were excellent. From chapter xx. onwards, to the end 
of the book, he was an eye-witness of what he" describes, as also in 
chapter xvi. verses 10-40. Parts of the first five chapters were ap- 
parently based on written documents, and the same may be true of 
some later narratives, such as those of St. Peter's labours (ix. verse 
32 to xi. verse 18). For the account of St. Paul's Conversion, as 
for the account of the journeys during which he was not with St. 
Paul, he would have the best possible information from St. Paul 
himself. The story of St. Stephen, chapters vi. and vii., was pro- 
bably, if we may judge from the full report of St. Stephen's speech, 
based on a written document, which he obtained at Jerusalem, when 
he was there with St. Paul, and this would be verified by St. Paul 

465 



466 ' ALL HAIL ' 

himself, who had been present at St. Stephen's martyrdom. The 
history of Philip's work in chapter viii. may well have been obtained 
from Philip himself during the visit of St. Luke in Paul's com- 
pany to Philip's house in Caesarea mentioned in Acts xxi. verse 8, 
It may be added that St. Luke's statements and descriptions, where 
they can be tested, are found remarkably accurate ; for example, the 
story of St. Paul's labours is confirmed by St. Paul's Epistles, and 
the description of the place of St. Paul's shipwreck is given with 
such careful exactitude, that it has been perfectly identified. 

If we had not in the Acts of the Apostles the words as well as 
the deeds of the Apostles, the book would seriously lose in value. 
Before His Ascension the Lord commissioned His Apostles to be 
His witnesses, and make disciples of all nations, even unto the ut- 
termost parts of the earth. The sermons and speeches of the 
Apostles recorded in the Acts are part of this witness-bearing. The 
question naturally arises, 'How were the sermons and speeches ob- 
tained?' Probably notes were carefully taken down by disciples 
who were present. Some sort of shorthand existed in those days. 
Galen, in the second century, tells us that the medical students 
took down his lectures which they attended. Moreover, St. Luke 
may have submitted his versions of the speeches to the Apostles 
themselves, and this it is more than probable he did in the case of 
St. Paul ; and even in the case of St. Peter's speeches the same 
course may have been taken, for St. Luke may have met him at 
Jerusalem, and even at Rome, where, says Irenasus, St. Peter and 
St. Paul worked together. 

We noticed in our last chapter that the Ascension was the last 
event recorded in the Gospel, and the first event recorded in the 
Acts. This event occupies a more prominent position in the Acts 
than in the Gospels. Our Lord's enthronement at the right hand 
of God, symbolised by the visible manifestation of the Ascension, 
was the fitting climax to the other manifestations of His Glory, 
which followed the Resurrection. The beginnings of that universal 
reign over man's heart and life which He entered on by that en- 
thronement, are related in the Acts of the Apostles. 

The long account of the Ascension with which the Acts begins 
must now be considered. After briefly recording the order of the 
Risen Lord to His Apostles to wait at Jerusalem for the promise 
of the Father, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, St. Luke gives the 
following report of the Ascension, a report supplementary to that 
which he gives in his Gospel. 

'Wihen they therefore were come together, they asked of him say- 
ing, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 467 

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the 
seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall 
receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon 3^ou : and 
3'-e shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judsea, 
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And 
when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken 
up ; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they 
looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold two men 
stood by them in white apparel ; which also said. Ye men of Galilee, 
why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is 
taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as 
3^e have seen him go into heaven' (Acts i. verses 6-1 1). 

The Lord's answer to the Apostles' question turns their thoughts 
from unprofitable speculation on things too deep for them to prac- 
tical work. It is interesting to note that the order He fixed (Jeru- 
salem, all Judaea, and Samaria) was the exact rnissionary order in 
which the expansion of the Church was actually carried out. We 
observe in this account that the Lord on longer vanished from the 
disciples' eyes, as Lie had vanished at Emmaus. He departed grad- 
ually, rising into the sky, going in the clouds of heaven, with 
power and glory that were the outward and visible signs of His ele- 
vation to a heavenly kingship. The effects of the Ascension on the 
Apostles we have already seen in St. Luke's and St. Mark's Gospels. 
Probably St. Luke's account (certainly St. Mark's) includes the 
experiences of the Church long after Pentecost, as the results of 
the Ascension. This view is quite legititmate, for the Ascension is 
vitally connected (as a cause is with its consequence) with the out- 
pouring of the Spirit, ten days after, at Pentecost When the 
Apostles returned from Olivet they went up into the Upper Room, 
which was their placet of meeting, both before and after the Ascen- 
sion, and there they spent their time in prayer. There were about 
a hundred and twenty of them, and among them were our Lord's 
Mother and other women, and His brethren. The Church was al- 
ready constituted on the first Easter evening, when the Lord breathed 
on the disciples, and made them partakers of His own risen life, 
the one body of Christ on earth. But the need of the Church, as 
a body, of further gifts of the Spirit at Pentecost was shown by 
the only action of that body in the interval which is recorded by 
St. Luke. 

They had to select an Apostle in the room of Judas, one qualified 
to be ordained to be a witness with them of the Resurrection, and 
they made the selection by casting lots, a crude method to which 
they never resorted again, after Pentecost. At last the ten days 



468 'ALL HAIL' 

of waiting were over, and Pentecost, the fiftieth day after the 
Passover, the feast of harvest, was come. 

'And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all 
with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound 
from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house 
where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven 
tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them'. And they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other 
tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance' (Acts ii. verses 1-4). 

It was the early dawn (as the original words signify) and they 
were all together in one place. The identification of this place, 
mentioned in verse i, with the Upper Room is of course possible, and 
on the surface seems probable; but even the courtyard of a house 
at Jerusalem could hardly have contained the tenth part of the huge 
crowd that listened to St. Peter's sermon (three thousand of these 
were baptized) whereas if we take it that the Temple wa the scene 
of the gift of the Holy Spirit, all becomes intelligible. 

We know that at this festival the priests opened the gates of 
the Temple at midnight, and crowds of worshippers entered and 
waited in the Temple courts. This is where the Apostles, like all 
religious Jews, would be. The first verse of the second chapter 
tells us : they were all with one accord in one place,' almost St. Paul's 
phrase for meeting to worship, while the word 'house' in the next 
verse, is the term used by the Septuagint and Josephus, for the 
Temple chambers. If one takes this view, the presence of crowds 
of Jews of the Dispersion, and the imniediate collection of a great 
multitude on hearing the sound as of a rushing mighty wind, are 
easily understood. The crowds of worshippers who thronged the 
Temple courts would be close to the Temple chamber where the 
Apostles were, and would assemble to it at once, and St. Peter 
would come out and 'lift up' his voice to reach the multitude which 
filled the spacious Temple court. 

Speaking with tongues is best understood by examining what St. 
Paul says to the Corinthians on the subject (i Corinthians xiv.). 
It seems to have been the emotional utterance of persons in a state 
of religious ecstasy. The manifestation was striking, but St. Paul, 
writing to the Corinthians, ranked it by no means as one of the 
highest gifts. Whatever the speaking with tongues may have been, 
exalted emotion and disinterested enthusiasm are mighty powers in 
the religious life, and these powers from this time distinguished the 
Apostolic Church and were recognised as a gift of the Spirit. St. 
Peter took the opportunity offered by the immense crowed, and stood 
up with the rest of the Apostles, and acted as their spokesman. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 469 

He chose the text of his sermon (the first sermon preached in the 
Christian Church) from Joel ii. verse 28, a great prophecy of the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh. His sermon may be 
summarised as Jesus and the Resurrection shown to be a fulfilment 
of Old Testament prophecy. The effect of the sermon was marvel- 
lous, and the conversion of thousands to Christ testified to the efficacy 
of the Old Testament Scriptures as a preparation for the coming of 
the true Messiah. 

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized : and the 
same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. 
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellow- 
ship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear cam.e 
upon every soul : and many wonders and signs were done by the 
Apostles. And all that believed were tog'ether, and had all things 
common ; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to 
all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with 
one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, 
did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising 
God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to 
the church daily such as should be saved' (Acts ii. verses 41-47). 

Here we have a deeply interesting word-picture of the early 
Church, which had been thus suddenly increased from a hundred 
and twenty souls, by the addition of three thousand converts. The 
four marks of the Apostolic Church are here set forth to be stead- 
fast continuance in the Apostles' teaching, in the Apostles' fellow- 
ship, that is, in the Christian Society united in one fellowship in 
Christ, in the Breaking of Bread, that is, the Holy Communion, al- 
ready the central act of worship, and 'the prayers' (R.V.) that is. 
the regular m.eeting for common prayer. Such was the enthusiasm 
of their brotherly love that they shared everything with one an- 
other; an experiment in brotherly common life worthy of admira- 
tion, but not apparently feasible in a large society, and soon tacitly 
abandoned in this. 

They were still pious Jews, who had not abandoned Judaism, but 
merely added to it its fulfilment, and they were daily in the Temple 
for worship, for praj'er and praise, in which all could join, and they 
broke bread at home, that is partook of the Holy Communion, their 
most sacred service, confined to the Brotherhood, in their houses ; 
and the note of the simplest parts of life, such as taking their daily 
food, was gladness and singleness of heart. The life of the infant 
Church was a new common life, lived in a new power, the power of 
the presence of the Risen Lord realised in the Spirit 'And the 



470 'ALL HAIL' 

Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved' ('those 
that were being saved,' R.V.). 

St. Peter had laid down the conditions of membership in the 
Apostolic Church, which remain the conditions to-day. They were 
as follows : — Repentance and Baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus 
for the remission of sins. Baptism in that name is still the door 
of entrance to the Christian Church, and Repentance and Faith are 
still required of those who enter. As yet, the primitive Church 
had favour with all the people. This day of Pentecost is rightly 
regarded as the birthday of the Christian Church, a second Nativity, 
the birth of Christ's new and glorious Body, which was then, and 
is now, intended to be the instrument of His Holy Spirit, as the 
body of His humiliation was in the days of His earthly ministry. 

From this day forth the Apostles began to understand the teach- 
ing, so mysterious at the time it was given, which had followed the 
last Supper, the teaching, namely, that the Lord's departure was to 
be a gain and a joy to His disciples. The joyous experience of a 
society animated by the Holy Spirit of Christ, a society in which 
each lived for all, in which the interest of the community was para- 
mount with the individual, in which each bore the other's burden, 
and so fulfilled the law of Christ, cast light on such once dark say- 
ings as, 'Nevertheless I tell you the truth ; It is expedient for you 
that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come 
unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you' ( St. John xvi. 
verse 7). 

'But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father 
will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all 
things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as the world 
giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, 
and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, be- 
cause I said, I go unto the Father : for my Father is greater than 
r (St. John xiv. verses 26-28). 

He had gone to the Father by a change of state of which the 
Ascension was the symbol. He had come again to His own, the 
coming of which the marvellous experience at Pentecost was only 
the beginning; and now they felt in themselves, in their life as a 
society, as well as in their life as individuals, that the Spirit of Him 
they had loved and known during His earthly ministry was dwelling 
in them, inspiring the heart of each brother and sister, and inspir- 
ing the greater heart of the divine brotherhood with the supernatural 
life that united every member of the Body with its Head. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 47i 

The Acts of the Apostles is the earliest historic record of the 
first years of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, who reigned at 
that time in the Church as a King within the Kingdom of God, the 
community of those who believed in and belonged to the Lord Jesus. 
The Acts of the Apostles is the Book of the Holy Spirit, the great 
record of His work. It has a special message for us, who are liv- 
ing under the same dispensation. We seen in that book that the 
earthly founders of the Church were conscious instruments under 
the direction of the one Spirit. We cannot doubt that it was this 
conscious submission of their lives in every detail to the personal 
guidance of the Spirit, that gave such power to the work of St. 
Peter and St. Paul, of St. Stephen and St. Philip.. 

The open vision of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church 
which is granted to us in the Acts of the Apostles is needed in 
these days, that are not days of open vision, to enable us to realise 
the abiding presence of Christ with those who carry out His com- 
mand, according to His promise, 'Lo, I am with you all the days 
(days of darkness as well as days of vision), even unto the end of 
the world.' 

But the infant Church was not to remain long in favour with the 
people. Peter and John were going up to pray in the Temple. 
'Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the 
hour of prayer, being the ninth hour' (Acts iii. verse i). At one 
of the gates they saw a lame man on whom Peter fixed his eyes 
with John, and said, 'Look on us.' The man looked. 'Then Peter 
said. Silver and gold have I none ; but such as I have I give thee : 
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he 
took him by the right hand, and lifted him up : and immediately his 
feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, 
and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and 
leaping, and praising God' (Acts iii. verses 6-8). 

Crowds collected in the Temple courts, at the sight of the healed 
man, and Peter improved the occasion and preached to them, his 
main points being that they had killed the Prince of Life, whom 
God had raised from the dead, and that faith in His name had ac- 
complished the miracle that they had just seen done. 

While Peter was preaching, the Priests, the Captain of the 
Temple, and the Sadducees arrested the Apostles and put them in 
prison for the night; but a great many who had heard the sermon 
believed, and the number of men in the Church rose thereupon to 
five thousand. Next day they were brought before the same judges 
who had condemned their Lord, Annas, Caiaphas, and others. 
They might well be alarmed at their -danger. They were the same 



472 ' 'ALL HAIL' 

Apostles who had deserted their Lord when He was arrested: but 
now they felt the mfluence of the Risen Lord, 'the power of his 
resurrection,' and Peter on behalf of all answered boldly to the 
question, 'By what power or by what name have ye done this?' 

'Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers 
of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of 
the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is 
made whole ; be it known unto you all, and to all the people of 
Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye cru- 
cified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man 
stand here before you whole' (Acts iv. verses 8-10). 

The High Priest and the rest of the judges were astonished at the 
boldness of Peter and John, and recognised that they were disciples 
of Jesus, 'and they took knowledge of them that they had been with 
Jesus.' They could not deny that the miracle had been performed, 
and they let Peter and John go after commanding them not to 
speak or teach in the name of Jesus. 

Up to this time there had been no attempt to extend the Church 
to the Gentiles. The Church was composed of devout Jews who 
believed in Jesus as the ]\Iessiah, and the Saviour God had raised 
from the dead. They worshipped in the Temple, and continued all 
the observances of Judaism, Undeterred by the warnings of the 
High Priest, the Apostles continued to frequent the Temple, and 
fresh converts were added, and great miracles were wrought on 
the sick by Peter, till multitudes poured in from the cities round 
about Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those vexed with unclean 
spirits, and they were healed every one. Then the Sadducee High 
Priest and his supporters of the same party, furious at the preach- 
ing of the Resurrection, arrested the Apostles and put themx in the 
common prison. Miraculously delivered from prison, they boldly 
went straight to the Temple and again taught the people. Ar- 
rested again, they were brought before the Council, and the High 
Priest again rebuked them, 'Then Peter and the other apostles 
answered and said. We ought to obey God rather than men. The 
God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on 
a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince 
and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of 
sins. And we are his witnesses of these things ; and so is also the 
Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him. When 
they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay 
them' (Acts v. verses 29-33). 

Then a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a learned man of great reputa- 
tion, commanded the Apostles to be removed and in their absence 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 473 

advised the Sanhedrin to let them alone. They took his advice, 
and contented themselves with beating the Apostles, and command- 
ing them not to speak in the name of Jesus. 

'And they departed from' the presence of the council, rejoicing that 
they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily 
in the temple, and in every house they ceased not to teach and 
preach Jesus Christ' (Acts v. verses 41, 42). 

It is interesting to consider whence St. Luke obtained the knowl- 
edge of Gamaliel's secret advice. His informant was most prob- 
ably St. Paul, who had been a favourite pupil of Gamaliel, and 
who may well himself have been present at this meeting of the San- 
hedrin. He was at that time a leading Pharisee, bitterly opposed 
to the Church of the Lord Jesus, the brotherhood which was as yet 
more like a Jewish sect than a bod}^ organized to teach a world- 
religion. 

In the sixth chapter of the Acts we read of the appointment of 
the seven Deacons, to look after the interests of the foreign Jews, 
who complained that their widows were neglected in the daily min- 
istration. The Deacons were selected by the body of the Church, 
but ordained by the Apostles w^ho, when they had prayed, laid their 
hands on them, just as Ordination is carried out to-day. Two 
of these Deacons, Stephen and Philip, proved to be notable evangel- 
ists : Stephen, especially, produced such an effect by his miracles and 
his powerful preaching, that the Jews, whom he had worsted in 
argument, worked up an agitation against him, and dragged him 
before the Sanhedrin. False witnesses were brought against him, 
as they had been brought against his Lord. The account of Steph- 
en's trial reads like the description of one who had been present at 
it, especially such a touch as this : 'And all that sat in the council, 
looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face 
of an angel' (Acts vi. verse 15). 

A question from the High Priest drew from Stephen a long 
and powerful apology. The stoning and death of the first martyr 
followed immediately on the close of his address, and his last 
words show the effects of the Crucifixion, being clearly inspired 
by his Lord's words, spoken as they nailed Him to the Cross. 

'When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and 
they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the 
Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of 
God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said. Be- 
hold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on 
the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and 
stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him 



474 'ALL HAIL' 

out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their 
clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. And they 
stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive 
my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he 
fell asleep' (Acts vii. verses 54-60). 

A party to the stoning of Stephen, as we learn, was the young 
Pharisee, Saul, in whom Stephen's faithful witness-bearing, and the 
wonderful glory of the Christ-likeness, the Christ living in His 
servant, were soon to bear fruit. The death was the signal for 
a great persecution, in which Saul took a leading part. We can 
easily guess from whom St. Luke obtained the account of Stephen's 
trial and martyrdom, when we remember that St. Luke was the 
companion and friend of St. Paul, the sometime persecutor Saul. 

The persecution had an opposite effect to that intended. It 
scattered the members of the Church from Jerusalem, not only 
through Palestine, but beyond its borders, and in so doing spread 
the Gospel and the Church far and wide. 

'Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where 
preaching the word' (Acts viii. verse 4). 

The first of those of whose work we read is Philip, the deacon, 
who went down to the city of Samaria to proclaim Christ to them. 

Impressed by Philip's miracles of healing, the multitude joyfully 
received his teaching. This was a first step towards evangelising 
the Gentiles, for the Samaritans were regarded by the Jews as half 
heathens. The Apostles showed their large-mindedness by at once 
sending Peter and John to Samaria, and all was done under 
authority, decently and in order. 

'Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that 
Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter 
and John : who, when they v/ere come down, prayed for them, that 
they might receive the Holy Ghost: (for as yet he was fallen upon 
none of them : only they were baptized in the name of the Lord 
Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received 
the Holy Ghost' (Acts viii. verses 14-17), 

Upon their way back from the town of Samaria, Peter and John 
preached the Gospel to many Samaritan villages. Then a message 
came from God to Philip to go south towards Gaza. There he 
met an Ethiopian official of great position, returning from worship 
at Jerusalem, and reading the prophet Isaiah, Here we see the 
Spirit at work. 'Go near,' said the Spirit to Philip, 'and join thy- 
self to this chariot' (Acts viii. verse 29). Philip ran to him, and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 475 

heard him reading, and said, 'Understandest thou what thou read- 
est?' (verse 30). The Ethiopian knew he did not understand, and 
with wise humility asked for guidance. He was reading the most 
wonderful prophec}' in the Old Testament, the fifty-third chapter 
of Isaiah, the prediction of the suffering servant of God literally 
fulfilled in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. 

Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, 
and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they 
came unto a certain water : and the eunuch said, See, here is water ; 
what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou 
believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and 
said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he com- 
manded the chariot to sand still : and they went down both into the 
water, both Philip and the eunuch ; and he baptized him. And 
when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord 
caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more : and he 
went on his way rejoicing' (Acts viii. verses 35-39). 

This baptism of the Ethiopian was the first definite step of which 
we know towards making Christianity a religion for all mankind. 
We observe that it was undertaken by Philip, not at the instance 
of the Apostles, but solely under the personal guidance of the 
Hoh- Spirit. The intense realisation of a personal Spirit of Christ 
dwelling in believers and exercising direction over their thoughts 
and actions is manifested in this account, which no doubt came 
from Philip, in whose house at Csesarea St. Luke at one time had 
staj-ed with St. Paul. 

Meanwhile the persecution of the disciples of the Lord by the 
Jews of Jerusalem grew fiercer under the leadership of Saul. Not 
satisfied with driving them out of Jerusalem and Judaea, he wished 
to follow their flight and hunt them down wherever they found 
refuge, even in distant lands. 

'And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against 
the disciples of the Lord, went unto the High Priest, and desired 
of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any 
of this wa}', whether they were men or women, he might bring them' 
bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damas- 
cus : and suddenly there shined round about him a light from 
heaven : and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, 
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, 
Lord ? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest : 
it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and 
astonished said. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the 
Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be 



476 ' ALL HAIL ' 

told thee what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with 
him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seemg- no man. And 
Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw 
no man : but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damas- 
cus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor 
drink' (Acts ix. verses 1-9). 

'The Way' is the earliest name for the Christian religion, for the 
name 'Christian' did not yet exist. 

This great objective vision of the Risen Lord changed Saul from 
a persecutor into an Apostle of Christ. It may perhaps be con- 
nected with the preparation for it in Saul's experience of the death 
of Stephen, and of the more than mortal sweetness of that martyr's 
last prayer. 

The reality of Christ's universal presence, thus wondrously re- 
vealed to Saul, never left him. The words, 'Why persecutest thou 
me?' revealed to Saul the presence of Christ in believers in him: 
nay, more, it revealed a continuous life of Christ on earth, in virtue 
of His divine nature. Out of heaven the Risen Lord spoke of Him- 
self as still on earth. St. Paul learned the lesson of this revelation 
very perfectly, as we learn from his epistles. 

'Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that 
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in m.y flesh for his 
body's sake, which is the church' (Colossians i. verse 24). 

'I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live 
by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him.self 
for me' (Galatians ii. verse 20). 

The consciousness of Christians that they are the instruments of 
Christ, that their bodies are the body in which He now dwells on 
earth, carries with it the power of a consecrated life. To feel 
that it is Christ's purpose to carry out His own Incarnation in you, 
not without your co-operation, and to employ you to help on the 
same purpose in others, is the strongest incentive to a truly religious 
walk. 

This appearance to Saul is classed by him with the other appear- 
ances after the Resurrection as being objective and personal like 
them. It was "a long time after the Ascension that this appearance 
took place, probably six or eight years, 'And last of all, as unto one 
born out of due time, he appeared to me also' (i Corinthians xv. 
verse 8). It is worth noting here, as evidence of the general level- 
headedness and trustworthiness of the Church members that though 
there was the strongest expectation in the Apostolic Church of the 
return of the Lord, no one among the many enthusiastic believers. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 477 

eagerly watching for the Ascended Lord's immediate visible return, 
claimed to have seen that return. 

There is not the slightest sign of subjective hallucinations, in the 
New Testament, being mistaken for real objective appearances either 
in the experiences of St. Paul or of the other Apostles. St. 
Paul perceived indeed, as he was praying in the Temple, the Lord 
speaking to him, but we are told that he had fallen into a trance. 
Again at Corinth, and later on at Jerusalem (Acts xviii. verse 9), 
the Lord spoke to him by night in a vision, but the trance and the 
night visions or dreams are clearly separated as different from the 
appearance on the road to Damascus in kind and not in degree. 
The effect of that noonday appearance on the road to Damascus on 
St. Paul's conception of Christ's presence in individual believers and 
in the believing community is manifest in many passages in the 
Epistles. This points to the objective nature of the appearance. 
The overwhelming effect on St. Paul and the completely new life 
on which he entered on his recovery, and persevered in to the end 
of his life, is evidence to the same effect. 

'And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he 
is the Son of God. But all that heard him' were amazed, and said; 
Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in 
Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring 
them bound unto the chief priests? But Saul increased the more 
in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, 
proving that this is very Christ' (Acts ix. verses 20-22). 

Not long after this wonderful change, Saul retired into Arabia, 
no doubt for solitary meditation and prayer, and as a preparation 
for the life-work which the Lord's words had already revealed to 
him he was appointed to do. Thence he returned to Damascus. 
Here we must leave him till he re-appears after a period of several 
years, briefly referred to in Galatians i. 

Meanwhile the Church in Palestine was gradually broadening 
under the leadership of St. Peter. After the conversion of Saul 
the persecution which he had headed cooled down. 

'Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee 
and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the 
Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied' (Acts 
ix. verse 31). 

Peter took advantage of the peaceful condition of things, and 
went to visit the Churches, in the exercise of that Apostolic over- 
seership, which was in due course by God's appointment to devolop 
into Episcopacy. In the course of his visitation he came to Joppa, 
where he lodged with one Simon, a tanner, by the seaside. There 



478 • ' ALL HAIL ' 

he had a vision, while in a deep sleep upon the housetop, to which 
he had gone to get privacy for prayer. The vision taught him he 
was to call nothing common or unclean. 'What God hath cleansed, 
that call not thou common.' While he doubted in himself how he 
was to understand the vision, three men, sent by Cornelius, a cen- 
turion stationed at C^sarea, arrived and asked for Peter, and ex- 
plained the desire that Cornelius had said that Peter should come 
to him. Guided by the Spirit, Peter went with them. At Caesarea 
Cornelius explained his purpose, and Peter now fully perceived 
the meaning of the vision he had seen. Peter thereupon preached 
the Gospel of Christ, realising that the heathen were neither com- 
mon or imclean. 

Cornelius and his household received the Holy Ghost, and were 
.baptized. Thus Peter not only received the three thousand Jews 
into the Church on the Day of Pentecost, but now at Caesarea re- 
ceived the first fruits of the Gentiles. When he returned to Jeru- 
salem, there was sharp opposition to be faced from those who con- 
sidered that the Church should be limited to the Circumcision, that 
is, the Jews; but Peter told the whole story of his vision, and 
went on, 'And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as 
on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, 
how that he said, John indeed baptized with water: but ye shall be 
baptized with the Holy Ghost. Forasmuch then as God gave them 
the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus 
Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? When they heard 
these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then 
hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life' (Acts 
xi. verses 15-18). 

The persecution that arose after the martyrdom, of Stephen had 
scattered abroad the followers of Christ, who preached the W^ord 
(that is, the Gospel message — the good news of God) wherever 
they went, but to Jews only. Afterwards some of them, men of 
Cyprus and Cyrene, came to Antioch, and preached the Lord Jesus 
to the Greeks, of whom a great number turned to the Lord. 
When the news of this great conversion of Gentiles reached Jeru- 
salem the Church there sent to them Barnabas, probably because 
he was a Cypriote, and the movement was of Cypriote origin. 
Barnabas, after he had done much by his own preaching, went to 
Tarsus to seek for Saul, who was apparently in retirement there, 
waiting for God's call. 

The two returned together to Antioch, where they laboured for 
a whole year and taught much people, and 'the disciples were 
called Christians first in Antioch' (Acts xi. verse 26). This uni- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 479 

versal name of the followers of Christ seems to have originated 
among the heathen populace. It was in the lowest part of the com- 
munity that Tacitus first observed the name in Rome. It is un- 
likely that the name is of Jewish invention, as the last thing Jews 
would wish would be to connect the hated sect with the Messiah. 
As little likely is it that it originated in the Church, the members 
of which called themselves 'The Way,' 'The Brethren,' 'The Dis- 
ciples,' 'The Saints,' 'The Faithful,' 'The Elect.' When Agrippa, 
evidently with scornful emphasis, uses the name (Acts xxvi.), 
St. Paul avoids it in his reply, by a circumlocution. The contempt 
with which the first Christians were regarded in the Roman Em- 
pire is evidenced by such insulting caricatures as the Palatine graffito, 
probably of the second centur)^, which represents a Christian wor- 
shipping a crucified man with an ass's head. The use of the term 
in I Peter iv. verses 15, 16, shows that the heathen employed it as 
synonymous with 'evildoer,' while the references of Latin writers to 
the Christians show the gross misrepresentations to which they 
were exposed. They whose law was really universal brotherly love 
were actually condemned, as Tacitus tells us, 'for hatred of the 
human race.' 

It was appropriately from the Churclx at Antioch, on the mem- 
bers of which the heathen had fixed this term of reproach, that the 
first organized mission was sent out to this contemptuous heathen 
world. 

Antioch was a great city, the capital of Syria, and it might have 
seemed that there was ample work for Barnabas and Saul to do 
there, but the Holy Ghost guided to a different conclusion the 
Church, which numbered among its teachers and prophets men from 
North Africa and Cyprus, and one from a king's court, Herod's 
foster-brother, Manaen, who as a boy had been brought up with 
him at the Emperor's court at Rome. The mighty invisible force, 
the spirit of the Lord Jesus, which had led the Church at Antioch 
to choose its best men, Barnabas and Saul, now sent them forth, as 
conscious instruments solemnly ordained for their work by prayer 
and the laying on of hands, as our clergymen are ordained now. 

To the eye of any heathen philosopher or man of affairs who had 
known the fact and the purpose of their going forth, there would 
have seemed to be something supremely ridiculous in the mission of 
the two poor Jews, to change the religion and the life of the culti- 
vated and wealthy world of the Roman Empire. The vastness of 
their task emphasised the inadequacy of their equipment. But it 
is not the seen things but the unseen things that are eternal, and 
the unseen superhuman power of Christ of which they were the 



48o 'ALL HAIL' 

willing instruments might be depended upon, they believed, to supply- 
all their need out of His fulness. One of them, Saul, soon to be 
called Paul, had the assurance of a special mission from the great 
revelation which had been made to him on the road to Damascus. 
He knew that the Risen Christ had appointed him and sent him as 
His Apostle to the Gentiles, to open their eyes that they might 
turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto 
God. 'Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, 
unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them 
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, 
that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among 
them which are sanctified by faith that is in me' (Acts xxvi. verses 
17, 18). Obedient to the heavenly Guide who had so miraculously 
appeared to him, and ever afterwards directed his steps, the Apostle 
to the Gentiles began his work. 

The destination of the messengers was Cyprus, and they sailed 
from Seleucia, the port of Antioch. At Paphos, in Cyprus, a 
struggle took place between Paul and a sorcerer, a false prophet 
named Bar-Jesus, or Elymas, who was endeavouring to prevent the 
Roman Pro-Consul, Sergius Paulus, a man of uncommon under- 
standing, from listening to the Gospel. So vigorous and convinc- 
ing was Saul, that the Pro-Consul believed, and from this time the 
Man of Tarsus stands first in the record of the journey. His name, 
too, is from this time changed to Paul. The missionaries came 
to Cyprus, Barnabas and Saul : they left it 'Paul and his com- 
pany' (Acts xiii. verse 13). 

From Paphos they sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, a Greek city 
with a celebrated temple to the goddess Artemis. From Perga they 
pushed at once through the wild ranges of the Taurus, to Antioch 
in Pisidia. Paul, as usual, went to the synagogue on the Sabbath- 
day, and addressed his countrymen there. This is the first sermon 
of Paul recorded in the Acts, and there is not a little resemblance 
to Stephen's sermon recorded in Acts vii., an indication perhaps of 
one of the influences which had worked for Paul's conversion. The 
sermon made a great impression, and Paul was invited to speak the 
next Sabbath-day. 

When the day came, almost the whole city collected to hear the 
word of God. But the Jews, jealous of the Gentiles, contradicted 
and blasphemed, and Paul and Barnabas then boldly laid down the 
missionaries' future line of action. The word of God must be 
spoken to the Jews first, but when they rejected it the missionaries 
turned to the Gentiles. This encounter, at Antioch in Pisidia, 
with the Jews who succeeded afterwards in expelling Paul and 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 481 

Barnabas .from the city, disclosed the source of the main opposi- 
tion which Paul had to encounter throughout his missionary work. 
It was the same at Iconium and Lystra, to the latter of which 
towns Jews from Antioch and Iconium pursued the Preachers of 
the Word, and induced the fickle Lycaonians (who had first taken 
Barnabas and Paul for gods and sought to offer sacrifices to them) 
to stone Paul, whom they dragged out of the city, supposing he was 
dead. The excited stoning of a mob, however, was a very different 
matter from a deliberate execution by stoning in Jerusalem, and 
Paul recovered. The 'perils by mine own countrymen' to which 
Paul referred in one of his Epistles (2 Corinthians xi. verse 26), 
were suffiicently in evidence during this first missionary journey, and 
it was also quite certain from the numbers of Gentiles that be- 
lieved that the Gentile world was ready to receive the Gospel, and 
the only question was what the terms of membership should be. 

It must not be forgotten that the infant religion of Christ was 
still in the cradle of Judaism. The Brethren at Jerusalemx still lived 
the lives of pious Jews, who held Circumcision to be an essential, 
and the whole ceremonial law binding on every mem^ber of the 
Church. Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch, thus complet- 
ing what is known as the first missionary journey of St. Paul. The 
date of this missionary journey of St. Paul is about 48 a.d. 

A meeting of the Church was held at Antioch, at which the 
missionaries told all that God had done for them, and how He had 
opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Some time after, however, 
men arrived from Judaea, and taught the Brethren 'except ye be cir- 
cumcised .... ye cannot be saved' (Acts xv. verse i). Dis- 
cussions followed, and Paul and Barnabas were sent to Jerusalem to 
the Apostles and elders about this question. The Apostles and elders 
and the rest of the Church met together, and Peter declared against 
laying the burden of Circumcision and the Law on the Gentiles that 
believed. The body of the Church, however, said nothing, while 
Paul and Barnabas told the wondrous works which God had 
wrought by them. When they had done, the head of the Church at 
Jerusalem, James, the brother of the Lord, gave it as his judgment 
that the Gentiles who turned to God ought not to be troubled with 
the Ceremonial Law. It is probably safe to assume that this coun- 
cil at Jerusalem (Acts xv. verses 1-23) is that which is described 
by St. Paul in Galatians ii. verses i-io: 'Then fourteen years after 
I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with 
me also. And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto 
them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately 
to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run 



482 ' ALL HAIL ' 

or had run, in vain. But neither Titus, who was with me, being a 
Greek, was compelled to be circumcised : and that because of false 
brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our 
liberty which we have in Christ Jesiis, that they might bring us into 
bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an 
hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. But 
of these who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were, it 
maketh. no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person:) for 
they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to 
me: but contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the un- 
circumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the cir- 
cumcision was unto Peter; (for' he that wrought effectually in 
Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty 
in me toward the Gentiles:) and when James, Cephas, and John, 
who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto 
me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship ; 
that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circum- 
cision. Only they would that we should remember the poor ; the 
same which I also was forward to do.' 

Paul seems to have shown extraordinary power of persuasion 
and the gifts of a born leader of men in the way he won over the 
pillars of the Church in Jerusalem, James and Peter and John, to 
acknowledge his apostleship to the Gentiles, that to him had been 
entrusted the Gospel of the Uncircumcision, as to Peter the Gospel 
of the Circumcision. This was a great triumph for the cause Paul 
had at heart, the loosening of the fetters of Judaism from the 
Gospel of Christ, that it might become supreme, as the universal re- 
ligion of mankind. 

The second missionary journey, which followed the Council, was 
marked by the extension of St. Paul's campaign to Europe, and the 
writing of the first letters which we possess, i and 2 Thessalonians. 
If we date the first journey approximately about 48 a.d, we may 
date the second about 51 a.d. Paul and Barnabas separated owing 
to Paul's refusal to take Mark with him, but remained friends, and 
we find Mark, after a considerable interval, restored to Paul's 
company and confidence. Paul took Silas as his companion. Silas 
was a prophet and a Jew, and, like Paul, a Roman citizen. He had 
been sent, together with Judas called Barsabas, to declare to the 
Gentiles at Antioch the liberal terms of membership decided on by 
the Council at Jerusalem, and now he went forth with Paul on the 
second missionary journey. They went first through Syria and Cil- 
icia, confirming the Churches. Then they went to South Galatia 
again. At Lystra they added to their party Timothy, the son of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 483 

Eunice, a Jewess and a believer. Timothy was evidently a convert 
of St. Paul's own making, and the dearest of all to the Apostle's 
affectionate heart. Paul was still the conscious and obedient in- 
strument of the Holy Ghost, as we see from the following passage : 

'Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of 
Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word 
in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into 
Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by 
Mysia came down to Troas' (Acts xvi. verses 6-8). 

At Troas, a night vision came to Paul, asking for help to be 
given to Macedonia, and in obedience to what he held to be a call 
from God^ he set sail for Macedonia. Luke was now with Paul, for 
he speaks of 'we' — e.g., 'We sought to go forth into Macedonia' 
(Acts xvi. verse 10), and so we know Paul had the author of the 
Acts with him. The principal places visited in Europe were Philippi, 
Thessalonica, Beraea, Athens, and Corinth. At Philippi, an im- 
portant Roman colon}^ Lydia, a seller of purple, a native of Thy- 
atira in Asia, was converted and baptized, together with her house- 
hold, and insisted on giving the missionaries a home, supplying 
for Christ's Apostle the ministering care which the sisters of Beth- 
any had given to the Master while on earth. Lydia was the first 
convert at Philippi, and thus a woman was the beginning of the 
most satisfactory and devoted of all the Churches founded by St. 
Paul. Here it was that, after Paul had cast out from a Greek girl 
a spirit of divination, her masters, indignant at the loss of their 
gains by her soothsaying, dragged him and Silas before the magis- 
trates, by whom they were arrested, beaten with rods and im.pris- 
oned, and Paul, after the remarkable conversion and baptism of the 
gaoler and his household, used the Roman citizenship of himself 
and Silas with such effect that the magistrates were obliged to come 
and entreat them to leave the prison. 

At Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia, the Jews, moved with 
jealousy, organized an attack of the rabble on the missionaries, 
raising a transparently false charge of sedition. From Thessalonica 
the Brethren sent Paul and Silas, by night, to Berssa, where the 
Jews gave Paul a fair hearing, searching the Scriptures to verify 
his statements, and the consequence was that many believed. At 
Athens, Paul was met by certain Epicureans and Stoics, who found 
the kernal of his preaching in 'Jesus and the Resurrection,' but 
took the latter word (miastasis) for the name of a deity. 'And 
they took hold of him and brought him unto the Areopagus' (i.e., 
Mars' Hill), 'saying. May we know what this new teaching is 
which is spoken by thee?' (R.V.). 



484 'ALL HAIL' 

'Then Paul stood in the midst of J\Iars' Hill, and said, Ye men of 
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too siipersitioiis ('some- 
what religious,' R.M.)- For as I passed by, and beheld your de- 
votions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE ('AN,' 
R.V.) UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly wor- 
ship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all 
things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth 
not in temples made with hands : neither is worshipped with men's 
hands, as though he needed any thing, seing he giveth to all life, 
and breath, and all things ; and hath made of one blood all nations 
of men for to dvv^ell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined 
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that 
they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and 
find him, though he be not far from everj^ one of us : for in him 
we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own 
poets have said. For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then 
as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the God- 
head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's 
device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at ('over- 
looked,' R.V.) ; but now commandeth all men every where to re- 
pent : because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge 
the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained ; 
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised 
him from the dead' (Acts xvii. 22-31). The poets referred to were 
Aratus and Cleanthes. 

The address had not much eft'ect on the Athenians, though Diony- 
sius, the Areopagite, believed, and Damaris, and others with them. 

From Athens St. Paul went to Corinth, where he joined one 
Aquila with his wife Priscilla, who had had to leave Rome owing 
to the decree of the Emperor Claudius for the expulsion of the 
Tews. Though strongly opposed by the Corinthian Jews, Paul 
preached the Gospel with great effect to the Gentiles, and stayed 
in Corinth eighteen months. 

The Jews, however, brought him before Seneca's brother, the 
Pro-Consul of Achaia, Gallio, who dismissed the case with scorn, 
and took no notice when the Corinthians beat Paul's accuser, Sos- 
thenes. the ruler of the synagogue, before the judgment-seat. 

The first Epistle to the Thessalonians, the earliest book in the 
New Testament (a.d. 51), was written from Corinth, and the 
second Epistle from the same place soon after the first. 

After he left Corinth he sailed for Syria, intending to return to 
Jerusalem, from which he had been absent three years. He was 
anxious to keep up harmonious relations with the Apostles and the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 485 

mother-church there. His compliance as a loyal Jew with the 
Jewish law is recorded in this passage of the Acts, 'having shorn his 
head in Cenchrea; for he had a vow' (Acts xviii. verse 18). This 
means that he had taken a Nazarite vow and let his hair grow long in 
accordance with it. It was permitted to cut the hair without wait- 
ing to arrive at Jerusalem provided that the hair was kept and 
burnt under the sacrifice of the peace-offerings which the Nazarite 
had to offer there. From Cenchrea he visited Ephesus, promising 
to return again, and sailed from Ephesus, landed at Caesarea, saluted 
the Church at Jerusalem, and returned to Antioch. This was the 
end of the second missionary journey. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

The Acts of the Apostles (Third Missionary Journey — Jeru- 
salem — Riot — Arrest by Romans — Caesarea — Felix — Festus 
— King Agrippa — Appeal to Caesar — Shipwreck at Malta — 
First Imprisonment — Last Missionary Journey — Last Im- 
prisonment — Martrydom ) . 

The third missionary journey, which is described in Acts xviii. 
verse 23, to xxi. verse 17, began from Antioch, where St. Paul had 
been staying for some time, about the year 54 a.d. He first went 
through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, visiting and strengthen- 
ing the Churches he had founded. Then he came to Ephesus, to 
which he had promised to return when he visited it hurriedly to- 
wards the close of his second journey. There, he came upon the 
traces of a learned and eloquent Jew of Alexandria, named Apol- 
los, mighty in the Scriptures, who had been not fully acquainted with 
Christian truth till he was instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, Paul's 
friends, who worked with him at Ephesus, and afterwards sent him 
on to Corinth, where Paul later wrote appreciatively of his work: 
1 have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase' (i 
Corinthians iii. verse 6). Paul remained in Ephesus three years. 
It was the city in which he made his longest stay and did his great- 
est work, to judge by the Epistle to the Ephesians, which only en- 
lightened Christians could have understood and appreciated. At 
first he taught in the synagogue, but when attacks were made on 
the Way (i.e., the Church), he separated from the Jews, and taught 
in the school or lecture-room of one Tyrannus. He appears to have 
taught from eleven to four daily. He continued teaching there for 
two years, and all that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord. 

Ephesus was a great city, the chief city of the Roman province of 
Asia, a great centre of trade, a great centre of luxury and learning, 
with a large population of many races. 

The most magnificent building in this magnificnt city was the 
great temple of Artemis (the Latinised form of the name is 
Diana), celebrated throughout the ancient world. The city re- 
joiced in being called the Temple-keeper, or Temple-warden, of the 
goddess and of her image, which was supposed to have fallen down 
from heaven. Her rows of breasts represent her function as the 
nourishing or nursing mother of all life. She was an Asian goddess 

486 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 487 

(Asia means the Roman Province) and very unlike the chaste 
Artemis of Greek literature and mythology. She personified the 
reproductive power of nature and the nourishing power of the 
earth. She had close analogies with the Phrygian Cybele, and her 
worship was carried on by troops of priests, the vilest and most 
degraded of mankind. Inside this vast and magnificent temple, 
with its pillars of Parian marble, were masterpieces of sculpture 
by Praxiteles and Phidias. Of the paintings, the most celebrated 
was the portrait of Alexander the Great, by Apelles, the most 
renowned painter of the ancient world, valued at about five thou- 
sand pounds. 

Ephesus was not only a sink of every sort of immorality, but it 
was also full of dark superstitions and sorceries. On this heathen 
population St. Paul produced marvellous effects by his preaching, 
emphasised by his miracles. Diseases were cured and evil spirits 
were cast out by the power that worked in and through the great 
Apostle. The strolling Jew exorcists who tried to use the name 
of the Lord Jesus to help them in their trade, failed completely, 
though their attempt shows how widespread was the Apostle's 
reputation for success. 'And this was known to all the Jews and 
Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus ; and fear fell on them all, and the 
name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed 
came and confessed, and shewed their deeds. Many of them 
also which used curious arts brought their books together, and 
burned them before all men : and they counted the price of 
them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily 
grew the word of God and pervailed' (Acts xix. verses 17-20). 

The books burned were estimated to be worth over 1700/.^ and 
the sacrifice proved the sincerity of the erring converts' repentance. 
While he was at Ephesus, St. Paul wrote his first letter to Corinth, 
about some serious troubles that had arisen there. In it he men- 
tioned that 'a great door and effectual is opened unto me' (i Cor- 
inthians xvi. verse 9). After two and a half years he was pre- 
paring for a journey into Macedonia, when a great disturbance 
arose at Ephesus about the Way. The success of Paul's preaching 
had alarmed Demetrius, the silversmith who made silver shrines 
(small representations of the goddess Artemis in her shrine) and 
who was probably the master of the Guild of the Associated Trades 
that year. Guild-life was very highly developed in the cities of 
Asia Minor, and was especially powerful in Ephesus. 

In defence of the interests of the trades, Demetrius delivered an 
inflammatory speech, probably in the hall of the guild. The dis- 
turbance spread to the streets, and the crowd at last rushed into 



488 ' ALL HAIL ' 

the theatre, the remains of which to-day represent an edifice that 
must have seated twenty-four thousand persons. It is to be noted, 
as an indication of the progress St. Paul had made at Ephesus, 
that certain of the Asiarchs (Roman officials of the province) were 
his friends, and would not allow him to adventure his life among 
the crowd in the theatre. 

The town clerk, or secretary of the city, at last quieted down 
the riot, by warnings of the punishment the citizens would receive 
from the Roman Government, which tolerated no disorder. The 
riot itself, caused by the decreasing business of the shrine-makers, 
is eloquent testimony to the success of Paul's two and a half years' 
preaching at Ephesus. After all was over, Paul carried out his 
previous intention of going into Macedonia. When he had visited 
that region and exhorted them, he went to Greece. He spent 
three months there, and then returned through Macedonia, and, 
sailing from Philippi, arrived at Troas. 

At this town we have a very striking account of early Christian 
worship, and how it was carried on at that time with the approval 
of St. Paul. 

'And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples ('we,* 
R.V.) came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, 
ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until 
midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, 
where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window 
a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep 
sleep : and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, 
and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And 
Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble 
not yourselves ; for his life is in him. When he therefore was 
come up again, and had broken bread ('broken the bread,' R.V.), 
and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of da)^ so he 
departed. And they brought the young man alive, and were not 
a little comforted' (Acts xx. verses 7-12). 

Here we have a picture of how Sunday was kept in the primitive 
Church. The day may perhaps be identified with April 24th, a.d. 
57. The members of the Church met in an upper room, no doubt 
in memory of the Upper Room in Jerusalem. They met to break 
bread, that is to join in the Holy Communion. It was an evening 
service prolonged till after midnight, and there were many lights 
in the upper room. It is from the use of lights, a necessary part 
of evening Communions in the primitive Church, that the use of 
lights in our celebrations of Holy Communion in the morning is 
derived. The only regtilar service at this time and even in the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 489 

second century, in the time of Justin Martyr, was gathered round 
the Holy Commnnion or Eucharist. In the second century, these 
evening services were forbidden by the Roman Emperor, and morn- 
ing services substituted. This record of the service at Troas comes 
from St. Luke himself, who was present. The we' is resumed at 
Philippi, and where the 'we' occurs in the narrative, we know 
throughout the Book of the Acts that St. Luke is v/ith St. Paul. 

From Troas, Paul's com.panions sailed to Assos, where they 
took in Paul, and touching at Mitylene, Chios, and Samos, arrived 
at Miletus, where Paul sent a message to Ephesus to sum.mon to 
him the elders of the Church. 

Ephesus was the town where, as we have observed, Paul's longest 
stay was made, and perhaps his greatest missionary work was done. 
Paul him.self had a high opinion of the opening for the Gospel 
which he had found in Ephesus, as we have noted in his two 
letters to the Corinthians. The elders came as Paul had invited 
them to do. St. Luke, no doubt, was present to take down a report 
of the address, which is one of the most beautiful and moving re- 
corded as delivered by the Apostle. 

'And when they were ■ come to him, he said unto them, Ye 
know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner 
I have been with a^ou at all seasons, serving the Lord with all 
humility of mJnd, and with many tears, and temptations, which 
befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews : and how I kept back 
nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have 
taught you publickl}^, and from house to house, testifying both 
to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and 
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold I go bound 
in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall 
befall me there : save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, 
sa3ang that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these 
things move me, neither count I m}^ life dear unto myself, so that 
I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have 
received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of 
God. And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have 
gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. 
Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the 
blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all 
the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and 
to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath rnade you 
overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with 
his own blood' — a strong statement of the divinity of Christ. 
Tor I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves 



490 . ' ALL HAIL ' 

enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves 
shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples 
after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space 
of three yars, I ceased not to warn every one night and day with 
tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word 
of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an 
inheritance among all them which are sanctified. I have coveted 
no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that 
these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that 
were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labour- 
ing ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words 
of the Lord Jesus, how he said. It is more blessed to give than to 
receive' (Acts xx. verses 18-35). 

The address gives us a very clear idea of the essentials of St. 
Paul's ministry, of the combination of earnestness and tenderness 
which so deeply endeared the Apostle to his brethren. The 'griev- 
ous wolves' of verse 29 were the Judaizers who were ever eager 
to undo the work of the great Apostle of the Gntiles. Long after 
this, Paul had to write to Timothy that 'All that are in Asia (i.e., 
the Roman province) turned away from me.' The last words in 
his address are specially interesting as preserving a profound and 
beautiful saying of the Lord Jesus which is not to be found in 
the Gospels. After the address Paul kneeled down and prayed with 
the elders, who, by the waj^, are called elders and bishops in the 
same chapter, the terms in the first century being interchangeable, 
■ and the word bishop only in the second century being restricted 
to the chief elder, or presbyter, of a city. 

The Ephesian elders were deeply affected by the address. They 
wept, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all 
for his words (which proved too true) 'that they should see his 
face no more.' Paul had done a great deal of work after he 
had left Ephesus, though the account in the Acts of the Apostles 
is very brief. He wrote several of the letters to the Churches, which 
we still possess ; the second epistle to the Corinthians was followed 
by the epistle to his own Galatians, who had fallen a prey to the 
Judaizers, to the great grief of Paul's loving heart. 

A little later he wrote the great Epistle to the Romans, a weighty 
treatise on the complete sufficiency of faith in Christ for all the 
needs of man. While Paul was in Greece he revisited Corinth, and 
there and at the other churches which he visited, he received 
collections of mone}^ for the poor members of the Church at Jerusa- 
lem. 

Paul's purpose during this missionary journey was to organize on 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 491 

a large scale a company of delegates from the Gentile Churches, 
who would come with him to Jerusalem and offer the money col- 
lected for this purpose to the Church there. The main object of 
this collection, though no doubt it was needed by the poorer mem- 
bers of the Church at Jerusalem, was to promote bortherly feeling 
between the Jewish Christians and the Gentiles. It was firstly 
for the good of the Gentile Churches to learn how divine a thing 
it is to give generously. God loves a cheerful giver, and indeed, 
in possessing the giving spirit man becomes God-like, a partaker 
of the Divine nature. It was secondly intended to win the hearts 
of the exclusive Jewish brethren at Jerusalem, and dispose them 
no longer to regard the Gentile Christians as their inferiors, but to 
feel as Paul did : 'For ye are all the children of God by faith in 
Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ 
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither 
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female : for 3^e are all one 
in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, 
and heirs according to the promise' (Galatians iii. verses 26-29). 

Paul well knew from personal experience that the special vice 
of the Jew was pride in regard to himself and contempt in regard 
to others. The Jewish Christians, or at any rate the Judaizers 
among them, were by no means free from this failing. 

Paul journeyed to Jerusalem by way of Csesarea, where he and 
Luke and the other members of the company stayed for a time with 
Philip the Evangelist. He was well received by James, the Lord's 
brother, the head of the Church at Jerusalem, and by the elders of 
the Church who all glorified God when Paul told what had been 
accomplished by his ministry. James and the elders told him that 
he was under suspicion among the Jewish believers, being accused 
of teaching the Jews who were among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, 
not to circumcise their children, and not to walk after the customs. 
This was not really true. It was only on the Gentiles that he taught 
that the old ceremonial law was not binding. 

When principle was not at stake, Paul was most conciliatory, and 
he now took the advice of James ; and complied with certain Jewish 
customs, so as to satisfy the Jewish Christians that he was a 
strictly orthodox Jew. But some Jews from Asia stirred up the 
Jews in Jerusalem against Paul, distorting his liberal teaching, and 
declaring that he had taken into the Temple a Greek from their 
own town of Ephesus, and so defiled it. An excited multitude 
dragged Paul out of the Temple, and would have killed him had 
not the Tribune in command of the Roman cohort at Jerusalem 
come to the rescue. Paul was about to be brought into the Castle, 



492 'ALL HAIL' 

and as he came upon the stairs asked the chief captain to allow 
him to speak to the people. Leave was given, and Paul told his 
countrymen the wonderful experience of his own conversion. They 
gave him a good hearing till he came to the words which the Lord 
Jesus had spoken to him, 'Depart, for I will send thee forth far 
hence to the Gentiles.' At this, they behaved as if their rage had 
driven them mad. The very idea that the Gentiles could be God's 
people seemed grossly insulting to these bigoted Jews. The chief 
captain was on the point of scourging Paul, when he told the cen- 
turion he was a Roman. The chief captain when he heard it not 
only gave up the scourging, but was afraid, because he had no right 
to bind a Roman citizen uncondemned. Next day, Claudius Lysias, 
as the chief captain was called, ordered the Sanhedrin to meet, and 
brought Paul before them. This was the court that had condemned 
our Lord, and had also had before it Stephen, and Peter and John. 
Paul ver}^ skilfully appealed to the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin on 
the question of the Resurrection, an abstract belief in the possibility 
of which they shared with him. The contest between the rival 
parties in the Sanhedrin became so hot that Paul was in danger 
of being torn to pieces, and the Roman soldiers had to rescue 
him once more. Next day the discovery through information sup- 
plied by his sister's son of a plot which forty Jews had made to 
kill Paul, induced the chief captain to send him strongly guarded 
to the Roman Procurator, Felix, at Csesarea. After Paul had been 
five days at Caesarea, the high priest and some elders from Jerusa- 
lem came up and accused him before Felix. The result of this was 
that the trial was postponed till Lysias, the chief captain, should 
come down. 

After two years, during which Paul remained in prison, Felix 
was succeeded as Procurator by Porcius Festus. Paul's enemies 
pressed Festus to send him to Jersulaem for trial, intending to kill 
him on the way, but Festus preferred to examine him at Caesarea. 

At the trial, Festus, being evidently inclined to curry favour with 
the Jews and possibly to give the prisoner up to them, Paul for- 
mally appealed to Caesar, that is, to the highest tribunal in the 
Empire. As Paul was a Roman citizen, Festus was obliged to 
accept the appeal, and send him to Rome to plead before the 
Emperor. Before he went, however, Agrippa, the last and worst 
of the Herods, visited Caesarea. 

Festus told him about Paul, and aroused his curiosity. By 
Agrippa's desire Paul was brought before him, and made an 
eloquent defence, in which he told again the story of his conver- 
sion. Its effect on Festus gives us an idea of the deep excitement 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 493 

with which St. Paul recalled those marvellous experiences, for 
Festus interrupted the prisoner, saying that his learning was driving 
him mad. Paul's argument to King Agrippa, who represented the 
position of the educated Jew, is this, that he (Paul) was a perfectly- 
orthodox Jew, and preached nothing but what the Prophets and 
Moses had predicted. Christianity as set forth by St. Paul was 
simply the appointed fulfilment of Judiasm. Paul's argument was 
not intended for Festus who, being a Roman, could not understand 
it, biit for King Agrippa, to whom he made his final appeal: 'King 
Agrippa, believeth thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.' 
The king answered with some haughtiness, 'With but little persua- 
sion (i.e., cheaply) thou wouldst fain make me a Christian' (R.V., 
Acts xxvi. verses 27, 28 : incorrectly translated in A.V., 'Almost 
thou persuadest me to be a Christian'). 

The idea that a king, the friend and favourite of the Emperors 
Claudius and Nero, should be induced to join a despised little 
Jewish sect by a mere appeal to the Prophets seemed supremely 
ridiculous. In Agrippa's. mouth the term Christian was unmistak- 
ably a term of contempt, and it is to be observed that St. Paul 
does not accept the term as applicable to himself. 

The result of Paul's appearance before Agrippa was his virtual 
acquittal. Agrippa's words to Festus summed up the situation : 
'This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed 
unto Csesar' (Acts xxvi. verse 32). 

It must be remembered that it was not only to escape the bit- 
ter persecution of the Jews that he made this appeal. As long 
ago as his stay at Ephesus he had planned to reach Rome. 'After 
I have been there, I must also see Rome' (Acts xix. verse 21). In 
the Epistle to the Romans, written during the seocnd missionary 
journey, he wrote to the Christian Church at Rome that he had for 
many years a longing to come to them whenever he went to 
Spain, and he added in the twenty-eighth verse, 'When therefore 
I have performed this .... I will come by you into Spain' 
(Romans xv. verse 28). Paul and certain other prisoners were 
given into the charge of a centurion named Julius, of the Augustan 
cohort, and sent on the first opportunity to Rome. The story of 
the voyage to Italy is evidently the record of an eye-witness, the 
prisoner's friend, Luke. Paul had also the companionship of Aris- 
tarchus of Thessalonica, who had been his companion in travel 
and had faced great risks during the riot at Ephesus. 

The voyage lasted for about two months and was full of storm 
and peril, and must have been very tr\nng to Paul when we re- 
member that the prisoners were chained by the wrist to the soldiers 



494 ' ALL HAIL ' 

who had charge of them. The great storm that caught them near 
Crete evidently gave the opportunity for Paul to assert himself, as 
a man out of the common. This he did by words of wisdom and 
good cheer which encouraged all that were in the ship. Moreover, 
we find that he and Luke, to whom the narrative is due, helped 
in some of the work, for instance in securing the boat and lighten- 
ing the ship. After many days of great hardship, in which they 
were all .supported and encouraged by the fervent faith and calm 
confidence of Paul, the voyage ended with a shipwreck from which 
they all escaped safe to land. The wonderful accuracy of Luke's 
narrative of the voyage and the shipwreck has been full tested and 
proved, the measurements and soundings of the traditional St. 
Paul's bay corresponding marvellously with the description in the 
Acts. From Malta, where they stayed three months, the great 
missionary and his companions went on in a ship of Alexandria, 
which touched at Syracuse in Sicily, and finally landed them in Italy, 
at Puteoli, near Naples, the great port where the Egyptian corn- 
ships landed their cargoes. At this port they were received by the 
Christian Church of that place, and were persuaded to stay seven 
da3^s. They had still a hundred and forty miles between them and 
Rome. Forty-three miles from Rome, at the Market of Appius, 
the Brethren met them, and again ten miles on, at the Three 
Taverns. At Rome they found themselves in" the capital of the 
Roman Empire, which comprised the whole of the civilised world 
at that time, from Persia to Spain and from North Africa and Egypt 
to Britain. 

The population of Rome, the greatest city of the day, was between 
one and two millions, and there was a very large colony of Jews. 
The Christian Church had been established there some time, though 
we have no record of its beginnings. We read, however, that 
among the crowd which were present at Pentecost were 'sojourn- 
ers from Rome, both Jews and proselj^tes.' We also read in the 
last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans of Andronicus and 
Junia, 'who also have been in Christ before me' {i.e., before Paul). 

From the number of persons to whom greeting is sent in the 
Epistle to the Romans, it is evident that there were many Gentiles 
as well as Jewish Christians in the Church at Rome and many 
whom St. Paul knew personally. 

In the spring of the year 6i a.d. in the seventh year of the reign 
of Nero, Paul arrived in Rome. He was handed over to the care 
of the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. The Prefect that year was 
the good Afranius Burrhus, and the prisoner, who came with the 
favourable report of all the Roman officials that had had to do with 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 495 

him, was treated with leniency. He was allowed to rent a house, 
and to have free intercourse with his friends. But he was chained 
b}^ the wrist to the soldier who guarded him. 

It is evident that he felt much this irritating and ceaseless re- 
minder of his imprisonment from his continual allusions to it in 
the Epistles which he wrote while thus in bonds. The perpetual 
presence of a rough soldier at his side must have made the com- 
plete loss of privacy particularly hard to bear to a man of Paul's 
very sensitive and high-strung nervous temperament. His stay 
at Rome, however, gave him great opportunities for usefulness. He 
began as usual by an appeal -to those who were chief amiong the 
numerous Jewish community. At first he seemed to have made 
some impression, but in the end the Apostle found them deaf to the 
Gospel, and turned from them to the Gentiles. 'And Paul dwelt 
two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came 
in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those 
things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no 
man forbidding him' (Acts xxviii. verses 30, 31). 

The two years in which this passage tells us St. Paul preached 
the Gospel probably ended about 63 a.d. During this period a great 
work was accomplished. Passages in the Epistles written at this 
time, notably in the Epistle to the Philippians, supplement the very 
brief reference to this work in the last two verses of the Acts of 
the Apostles. 'But I would ye should understand, brethren, that 
the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the 
furtherance of the gospel ; so that my bonds in Christ are manifest 
in all the palace, and in all other places ; and many of the brethren 
in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold 
to speak the word without fear' (Philippians i. verses 12-14). 

This passage, if we translate the words 'in all the palace' (A.V.), 
by 'throughout the whole Praetorian guard' (R.V.), indicates that 
many soldiers of the Praetorian guard had accepted the Gospel. 
Again, in Philippians iv. verse 22, we find an indication that the 
Gospel had reached the household of Nero and made converts 
there: 'All the Saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's 
household.'- Why the Acts of the Apostles stops as it does, and 
tells us nothing in detail of the Apostle's life during these years, 
we cannot say. We learn from Philemon, verse 24, that St. Luke 
as well as St. Mark, with Demas and Aristarchus, were fellow- 
workers with St. Paul at that time, as also was the Apostle's spirit- 
ual son, Timothy, and other less-known names. It was during these 
years that the four Epistles of the First Captivity, as they are called 
— the Epistles to the Philippians, Ephesians Colossians, and Phile- 



496 'ALL HAIL' 

mon — were written. It was probably after the death of Agrippma, 
but certainly during the ascendancy of Poppsea, that Paul arrived 
at Rome. 

The Apostle's mild imprisonment appears to have ended in his 
acquittal, possibly after a trial befoer Nero in person. After the 
Apostle was set free, he seems at once to have carried out the in- 
tention of visiting the Churches he had founded, revealed in the 
Epistle to Philemon and in that to the Philippians. He had years 
before planned to visit Spain, and this he appears to have done, if 
we accept the evidence of Clement. 

The references in the Pastoral Epistles (i and 2 Timothy and 
Titus) to a last missionary journey in the East, previous to the 
second imprisonmnent, are sufficiently clear. 

He intended to winter at Nicopolis, in Epirus, when he wrote 
(Titus iii. verse 12). He had been at Troas : 'The cloke that I left 
at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the 
books, but especially the parchments' (2 Timothy iv. verse 13). 
He had probably been at Corinth and certainly at Miletus : 'Erastus 
abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick' (2 
Timothy iv. verse 20). 

From I Timothy i. verse 3, we gather that this Epistle was 
written in Macedonia, from whence he writes Timothy directions 
for his work at Ephesus. Taking 61 to 63 a.d. to be the period of 
his first imprisonment at Rome, and 67 a.d. to be the date of his 
martyrdom, four years are left for the visitation of the Eastern 
Churches, for the missionary visit to Spain, for the missionary tour 
in Crete, and for the tour in Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, 
referred to in the Pastoral Epistles. This last missionary journey 
ended with the second imprisonment and second trial. It was 
during the absence of Paul on these missionary journeys (if we 
accept the chronology given above) that an event had taken place 
which completely altered the position of Christians at Rome. 

In July 64 A.D. a great fire broke out in Rome, which raged for 
nine days and destroyed a large part of the city. Suspicion fell upon 
Nero as the author of the fire, and in order to clear himself he 
laid the guilt of the conflagration on the Christians. The persecu- 
tion which thereupon began at Rome, by the Emperor Nero's or- 
ders, changed the position of Christians over the whole Empire. 

St. Paul was perhaps arrested at Troas, where, in the haste of 
the arrest, his books and parchments and cloak were left behind, 
and sent to Ephesus first for trial, and thence to Rome. At Rome 
he seems to have appeared before Nero, to whom he probably re- 
fers as the lion (compare the wild beast in Revelation) in his 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 497 

latest Epistle, 2 Timothy iv. verse 17: 'And I was delivered out of 
the mouth of the lion.' 

His deliverance was only temporary. He was remanded and 
brought up for trial, and probably in a.d. 67, or, according to tradi- 
tion, June 66 a.d., he was beheaded about three miles outside the 
walls of Rome, in a spot not far from the Ostian Road, then known 
as Aquae Salvise, now as Tre Fontane. The condemnation and 
execution of the Great Apostle has been handed down by a Roman 
tradition which is probably correct. 

From the New Testament we know nothing later than the 
Apostle's own utterances during his second imprisonment, contained 
in the second Epistle to Timothy. In that Epistle he writes that 
he had already appeared at the bar of the Empire, and though 
without human support, yet with the Lord by his side, he had fully 
proclaimed the Gospel message. He was waiting now for the end, 
for this time he expected condemnation and death. Indeed, he 
felt his life was already being poured out like a drink-offering, and 
the time when the offering would be completed he knew had almost 
come. He waited for that end, in calm and happy confidence that 
the Lord whom he had served would reward him: 'For I am' now 
ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I 
have fought a good fight (i.e., run a good race), I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them 
also that love his appearing' (2 Timothy iv. verses 6-8). 

This is the Apostle's brave and happy farewell to earthly life. 

To study St. Paul's life intelligently is to realise the marvellous 
way in which the spirit of the Lord Jesus, the H'oly Ghost, made 
a single Jew an effectual instrument in the foundation of the 
Church. The great human master-builder of the Catholic or uni- 
versal Church had, long before the destruction of Jerusalem came 
to complete his work, changed the legalist Jewish Christianity which 
was practically little more than a sect of Judaism, into a world- 
religion. The many-sided nature, even more than the excellent 
education of the Apostle, gave him exceptional fitness for this great 
task. With a powerful and trained intellect and an imagination 
that soared often into the loftiest idealism, he combined a sound 
common sense and a careful attention to detail which are not gener- 
ally found together. The depth of his tenderness rivalled the 
depth of his enthusiasm, but the secret of his power was in the fact 
that he was fully conscious that he was possessed by a spiritual 
Presence, the spiritual presence of the Risen and Ascended Lord 



498 'ALL HAIL' 

Jesus Christ who had dawned upon him like a glorious sunrise on 
the road to Damascus, and had remained with him a felt and realised 
Presence ever after. It was literal truth to him when he wrote to the 
Galatians : 'I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not 
I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh 
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
himself for me' (Galatians ii. verse 20). 

The same revelation on the road to Damascus had also taught 
Paul the presence of Christ in His Church, a real presence in the 
believing community as well as in the individual believer. 

This continuance of the earthly life of the glorified Christ in the 
Church explains St. Paul's view of salvation for each and all. 
Each member of the Church is a member of the body which lives 
and moves to do the will of the glorified Christ, who, though 
departed to the Father, still holds direct intercourse with His dis- 
ciples. 

The power of this doctrine as an incentive to devoted service 
was shown most convincingly in the life of St. Paul himself. He 
felt in its fulness the far-reaching life of the Incarnation because 
he felt that life moving within him. His realisation of the heights 
and depths of this mystery revealed to him new and wonderful 
potentialities in human nature. And this same conscious union with 
Christ gave him the Master's tender love of souls which made him 
as great an evangelist as he was an organizer. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

St. Paul's Epistles grouped chronologically — The Epistle to the 
Hebrews — The Seven Catholic Epistles — James — i. and ii. 
Peter — i., ii., and hi. John — Jude. 

St. Paul's chief legacy to mankind was the freeing of the Chris- 
tian Church from the cramping bondage of Judiasm, and the carry- 
ing out of the intention of the Church's Head of making His re- 
ligion a universal religion, and the Church a Catholic or universal 
Church. He left another legacy of priceless value, the thirteen 
Epistles that have survived out of his correspondence. These 
Epistles are not arranged chronologically in the New Testament ; 
but to gain a full knowledge of their contents it is most important 
to arrange them in groups according to their true chronological 
order. Thus best can we understand the true inwardness of the 
Apostle's teaching by taking account of the difficulties and the needs 
it was intended to meet. For this purpose the Epistles may be 
divided into four groups. The first group consists of the first and 
second Epistles to the Thessalonians, written from Corinth about 
the year 51 a.d. The first Epistle is probably the earliest docu- 
ment in the New Testament. It contains a striking description of 
the resurrection of those that sleep in Jesus, and comforts the 
brethren with the hope of reunion with their loved ones hereafter. 
The second Epistle was written soon after the first. These Epistles 
teach Christian doctrine generally, and specially about the last 
things ; that is, the second coming of Christ in judgment on a 
wicked world, which was then expected immediately. 

In 2 Thessalonians ii. there are apparently allusions (e.g., the 
mystery of lawlessness) to the growing Caesar-worship, the wor- 
ship of the Emperor as a god, which was spreading rapidly through- 
out the provinces of the Roman Empire. As long before as the 
year 39 a.d. Caligula had attempted to set up his statute in the 
Temple at Jerusalem; but it was not till the later part of the reign 
of Nero that persecution for refusing to worship the Emperor really 
set in. St. Paul, like St. John at a later date, perceived clearly 
that worldliness, then specially expressing itself as Emperor-wor- 
ship, was the real rival of the worship of Jesus Christ. By insist- 
ing on that worship as a test of loyalty, the State arrayed the Em- 

499 



500 'ALL HAIL' 

pire against the Church, and made the religion of Christ fight for 
its life. 

The second group of letters may be dated from 55 to 58 a.d. 
They comprise the two Epistles to the Corinthians, the Epistle to 
the Galatians, and the Epistle to the Romans. These are the great 
Epistles of the controversy with Judaism. The first Epistle to 
the Corinthians, which comes first in this group, was written at 
Ephesus. Corinth was a wealthy heathen city, celebrated for its 
commerce and notorious for its luxury and immorality, and it is 
not at all surprising that Paul's converts had relapsed into the vices 
they had learnt in their heathen days. To meet the needs of Cor- 
inth, Paul found only one power effectual, Jesus Christ and Him 
crucified. The Cross he found the only cure for sin. To crucify 
the flesh, to die with Christ, proved to be the only way to substi- 
tute the life of the Spirit for the life of the Flesh. The Apostle's 
argument against sins of the flesh is as effectual to-day as it was 
then: 'Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?' 
(i Corinthians vi. verse 15). Again: 'What? know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which 
ye have of God, and ye are not you own? For ye are bought with 
a price : therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which 
are God's (i Corinthians vi. verses 19, 20). 

Similarly, in dealing with the question of abstinence from meats 
offered to idols, the Apostle lays down an eternal principle. We 
must be careful in exercising our Christian liberty, not to cause our 
weak brother to stumble or perish, 'for whom Christ died.' 

'Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend' 
(i Corinthians viii. verse 13). 

In the eleventh chapter the irreverent conduct that had arisen 
in connection with the love-feasts and the subsequent celebration of 
the Lord's Supper is dealt with in a way which gives us an ex- 
ceedingly interesting picture of the public worship of the primitive 
Church. We find the great Sacrament of the Lord's Supper fully 
established as the central act of Christian worship. Chapter xiii. 
is the beautiful and well-known chapter, every sentence of which 
should be treasured, on Charity or Christian Love, which the 
Apostle values as superior even to faith and hope. 

The fifteenth chapter contains a most impotant statement of the 
Gospel of the Resurrection, which opens with a list of the Risen 
Lord's appearances, closing with the appearance to the writer on the 
road to Damascus. This chapter from the thirty-fifth verse con- 
tains a great argument nobly expressed in stately words for the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 501 

Resurrection of the Christian as the necessary consequence of the 
Resurrection of Christ. 

In the second Epistle, which was perhaps written from Philippi, 
the Apostle returns to the subject of the Resurrection, and the 
spiritual body, which in the first Epistle was contrasted with the 
heavenly body, becomes the heavenly house contrasted with the 
earthly. He had at this time to deal with a kind of mutiny in the 
Church at Corinth which had been fomented by Judaizing emis- 
saries. In this Epistle, even more than in the former Epistle to 
the Corinthians, Paul maintains that he is an Apostle equal to the 
chiefest of the twelve. 

The eleventh and twelfth chapters contain a grand apology for 
the Apostle's own life. 

The Epistle to the Galatians was called forth by the attempt of 
certain Judaizing teachers who had followed in St. Paul's steps 
to persuade the Gentiles that they must keep the Jewish ceremonial 
law and be circumcised. St. Paul dealt with this with great 
plainness of speech. 'Behold, I Paul say unto you, If ye receive 
circumxision Christ will profit you nothing' (Galatians v. verse 2). 
In the earlier part of the Epistle he gives a most valuable sketch 
of part of his own life and of the attitude of the chief Apostles 
towards him. 

This Epistle was probably written after the second Epistle to the 
Corinthians, and before the Epistle to the Romans, either from 
Macedonia or Corinth. The Epistle to the Romans deals with the 
question of Judaism and the Law, that is, the relations of Chris- 
tianity and the old Jewish religion ; but being addressed to a 
Church which Paul had not yet visited, it deals with the question 
in a more detailed and mor conciliatory way. The vehemence of 
the personal appeals to the Galatians in the Epistle to them is 
changed to a large and luminous exposition of the Gospel truth. 
This Epistle is rather a profound treatise on its subject than a 
personal letter, and, relying on its central doctrine of justification 
by faith, has the calm of conscious victory. 

Perhaps the noblest of many noble chapters in the Epistle to the 
Romans are the eighth and tewelfth chapters, both of which if 
space permitted would be quoted in full, but we can only give here 
the last verses of the eighth chapter, verses 35-38 : 

'Who shall separate us from' the love of Christ? shall tribulation, 
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
sword? As it is written. For thy sake we are killed all the day 
long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all 
these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved 



502 ' ALL HAIL ' 

lis. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord.' 

The third group of Epistles may be called the Epistles of the 
first captivity, and were written during the first mild imprisonment 
about 6i to 62 A.D. The Epistle to the Philippians should stand first 
in point of time in this group. This Epistle arose out of the visit 
of Epaphroditus, an elder of the Church at Philippi, who had come 
up with a contribution in money from the Church for the help of 
their beloved teacher. We shall probably be not far wrong in 
attributing to the influence of that good, generous, and wealthy 
woman, Lydia, Paul's first convert in Philippi, some of the tender 
thoughtfulness and liberality of the Philippians. It will be re- 
membered that Lydia, after she and her household were baptized, 
had insisted on making her house the home of Paul and his com- 
pany, and after the imprisonment of Paul and Silas at Philippi, 
they were again received in her house. As the Lord Jesus had 
been ministered to on earth by devoted women, so had his Apostle 
been ministered to by Lydia and by the mother of Rufus, the wife 
of Simon of Cyrene, of whom he spoke affectionately as one who 
had given him the care of a mother and won from him the affection 
of a son. Paul had the joy of having Timothy with him at this 
time, and that, no doubt, added to the warmth of the spirit of rejoic- 
ing and gratitude that pervades the whole Epistle. Though writ- 
ten by a prisoner, the letter breathes a peaceful and happy confidence 
which is the final fruit of a consecrated life. This finds expression in 
such exhortations, as these* 

'Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy 
and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved .... 
Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I . say. Rejoice. Let your 
moderation (forbearance or gentleness) be known unto all men. 
The Lord is at hand. Be careful nor nothing; but in every thing by 
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made 
known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
standing, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; 
if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
things' (Philippians iv. verses 4-8). 

The note of thanksgiving with which the Epistle begins continues 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 503 

to the end. It is a letter full of sweetness and light, for the Philip- 
pian Church was the one Church that really satisfied the Apostle's 
ideal of what a Church should be. The other Epistles in this 
group, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, stand together as writ- 
ten late in the first imprisonment, probably in the year 62 a.d. 
Colosse, an ancient and at that time decaying city of Phrygia, was 
situated on the river Lycus, ten or eleven miles from Laodicea, and 
a little further from H'ierapolis. Epaphras, a Christian missionary 
of Colosse, had visited St. Paul at Rome, and made known to him 
the difficulties of the Christian Church in that place. These difficul- 
ties, not 3^et sufficiently developed to be called a heresy, apparently 
sprang chiefly from Judaizing teaching, complicated by the kind 
of religious speculation to which the Phrygian mind was prone. 
The report of Epaphras drew forth the Epistle from the Apostle. 

'Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in re- 
spect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: 
which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. 
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility 
and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he 
hath not seen, vainly puffed up his fleshy mind, and not holding the 
Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourish- 
ment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of 
God' (Colossians ii. verses 16-19). 

The method with which St. Paul dealt with this evil which he held 
to be essentially a separation between the believer and his Lord 
was to set before the Colossians a true conception of the Person and 
the work of Christ considered in relation to the universe, and also 
in relation to the Church. 

'Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every 
creature : for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and 
that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers : all things were created by 
him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things 
consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the 
beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might 
have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should 
all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his 
cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say 
whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, 
that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked 
works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through 
death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his 
sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not 



504 ' ALL HAIL ' 

moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and 
which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; 
whereof I Paul am made a minister' (Colossians i. verses 15-23)- 

All the Colossians' consciousness of their need of assistance to 
attain to fuller wisdom' and knowledge was (the Apostle points 
out) perfectly met in Christ Jesus the Lord, in whom are hid all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge' (Colossians ii. verse 3). 

'Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain 
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, 
and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of 
all principality and power' (Colossians ii. verses 8-10). 

We also learn that some at least of St. Paul's letters to the 
Churches were intended to be read not only in the Church to which 
they were sent, but in other Churches : 

'And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read 
also in the church of the Laodiceans ; and that ye likewise read 
the epistle from Laodicea' (Colossians iv. verse 16). 

The words 'The salutation by the hand of me Paul' remind us 
that owing to St. Paul's ill-health his letters were written by an 
amanuensis at the dictation of the Apostle. Onesimus, the faithful 
and beloved brother, who, with Tychicus, carried Paul's message 
to the Colossians, was the principal subject of Paul's next letter, 
the letter to Philemon. This is the shortest and slightest of all St. 
Paul's letters and is the sole specimen we possess of the Apostle's 
private correspondence with his personal friends. The tenderness, 
tact, and delicacy which the Apostle displays in dealing with a 
difficult situation, give the letter unique interest as a trustworthy 
revelation of character. 

Philemon was an intimate friend of St. Paul, 'our dearly beloved, 
and fellow-labourer' (verse i), and apparently one whom he had led 
to Christ. 

'I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit 
I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me thine own self besides' 
(verse 16). 

It is evident from the references to his hospitality to the saints 
that Philemon was a man of means. The purpose of the letter 
was to entreat him to receive back a runaway slave whom Paul 
had won to Christ; to receive him, not as a slave, but as a brother 
beloved, that is, a member of the Christian brotherhood. Onesimus, 
the slave, had fled to Rome, where he had been converted by Paul, 
who was now sending him home to his master. The Apostle shows a 
joyous confidence in Philemon's generous reception of his slave, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 505 

basing his request not only on Philemon's friendship for himeslf, 
but on the mutual brotherhood of master and slave in Christ. He 
does not ask him directly to emancipate his slave, but he is certain 
that Philemon will do more than he asks him to do. 

'Knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say' (verse 21). 
This delicate persuasiveness practically leaves Philemon no other 
alternative than to free his brother in Christ. Onesimus appears 
to have robbed his master, and for this and running away would 
have been severely punished by a heathen master had he fallen 
into his hands. Society in the Roman Empire was based on slavery. 
Slaves were regarded as mere chattels ; they were also absolutely 
in a master's power to be flogged to put to death at his will. 
Christianity dealt with the evil of slavery gradually, not by direct 
attack, but by positive teaching of the brotherhood of all in Christ, 
and depended on the influence of this truth, when realised, to make 
slavery impossible. 

The remaining Epistle of this group, the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
is the Epistle of the great ideal of the Universal or Catholic Church, 
the society predestined to unite all mankind in one purpose and one 
spirit, in living one life, the Christ-life, that is, the life of God. 
The plea for unity in this Epistle is really based on our Lord's 
prayer for the unity of His Church, especially at the passage re- 
corded in St. John xviii. verses 18-23 '■ 'As thou hast sent me into 
the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for 
their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified 
through the truth ('in truth,' R.V.). Neither pray I for these 
alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their 
word ; that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I 
in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe 
that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I 
have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one : I in 
them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one ; 
and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved 
them, as thou hast loved me.' 

In this Epistle, as in the Lord's great prayer for the unity of 
the Church in the passage quoted above, the main teaching is that 
the union of Christians with Christ implies the union with one 
another. The Epistle as a whole is rather a great inspired revela- 
tion to the Universal Church than a mere letter to an individual 
Church. Still, it also contains personal appeals to the Ephesians : 
'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: 
walk as children of light' (Ephesians v. verse 8). 

It seeks to win Christians to live the higher life by the picture 



5o6 'ALL HAIL' 

of the Church in its perfection, which the Apostle draws with a 
hand, as it were, guided from heaven. The appeal to the whole 
Church to live the life of Christian unity is admirably put in Ephe- 
sians iv. verses 1-16: 'I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech 
you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, 
with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one 
another in love ; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the 
bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and 
in you all. But unto every one of us is given grace according to 
the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he as- 
cended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. 
(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first 
into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same 
also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all 
things.) And he gave some ('to be,' R.V.) apostles; and some, 
prophets ; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; 
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for 
the edifying of the body of Christ : till we all come in ('attain unto,' 
R.V.) the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of 
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed 
to and for, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the 
sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to 
deceive ; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in 
all things, which is the head, even Christ : from whom the whole 
body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint 
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of 
every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself 
in love.' 

As in the Epistle to the Colossians, so here the higest speculative 
truths are shown to involve the humblest practical morals of every- 
day life. 

The fourth and last group of St. Paul's Epistles, best known as 
the Pastoral Epistles, consists of the first Epistle to Timothy, the 
Epistle to Titus, and the last Epistle we possess, written near the 
close of St. Paul's life, the second Epistle to Timothy. The first 
Epistle to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus were apparently writ- 
ten after the Apostle's release from his first imprisonment at 
Rome. If his first imprisonment at Rome ended in the year 63 a.d,, 
the visitation of the churches he had founded in Asia Minor, Mace- 
donia, and Greece, the missionary work in Crete with Titus referred 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 507 

to in the Epistle to Titus, the possible missionary visit to Spain 
(referred to by St. Clement and the Muratorian Canon), would 
fill the years before the second imprisonment and trial, which may 
be dated about 67 a.d. 

But in any case these Pastoral Epitsles contain genuine accounts 
of St. Paul's movements after his first imprisonment at Rome. 
When the first Epistle to Timothy was written, Paul had been with 
him a short time before. The Epistle consists of practical coun- 
sels to Timothy, who had remained at Ephesus as the Apostle's 
delegate in charge of the work there. The main purpose is summed 
up in chapter iii. verses 14, 15 : 

'These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly: 
but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to 
behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living 
God, the pillar and ground of the truth.' 

The following verse contains an early Christian hjnun : 'And 
vrithout controversy great is the mystery of godliness : He who was 
manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, 
preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up 
into glory' (R.V.). 

The great fundamental thoughts of the salvation of all mankind, 
and of the consecration of all creation, run through all the Epistle, 
and dictate the rules of conduct enjoined. The passages which 
deal with the organization of the Church are particularly interest- 
ing. 

In Timothy's position as St. Paul's delegate is to be found the 
germ from which the Episcopate developed. While this Epistle 
witnesses to the delegation of Apostolic authority even more fully 
than do Titus and 2 Timothy, it is also important as a first hand- 
book of Church discipline. 

The Epistle to Titus was probably written, like the first Epistle to 
Timothy, during St. Paul's missionary visitation to the Churches 
he had founded in Greece and Macedonia, after his first imprison- 
ment in Rome. It is evidently a private letter, not intended to be 
read in the churches. St. Paul and Titus had been in Crete to- 
gether, and Titus had been left by the Apostle to act as his delegate 
to appoint presbyters, and to complete the organization of the 
Churches. The letter gives a picture of the development of the 
ministry in the early Church, and shows how the beauty of the 
well-ordered religious and family life of the Christians recommended 
itself to those who were outside in the Roman Empire. As in oth- 
ers of St. Paul's Epistles, the humblest duties are connected with 
the highest hopes. 



5o8 'ALL HAIL' 

'Exhort servants (slaves) to be obedient unto their own masters, 
and to please them well in all things ; not answering again ; not pur- 
loining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the 
doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. For the grace of God 
that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that 
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, 
righteously, and godly, in this present world ; looking for that 
blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might re- 
deem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people 
('a people for his own possessoin,' R.V.), zealous of good works' 
(Titus ii. verses 9-14). 

The second Epistle to Timothy is clearly of later date than the 
other two Pastoral Epistles : St. Paul when he wrote had been some 
time in a Roman prison. A short time before he wrote this 
Epistle he had been travelling in Asia Minor and Greece, and he 
had been deserted in his bonds by all the brethren in Asia. 
Demas had forsaken him, 'having loved the present world.' No one 
but Luke remained with him. Onesiphorus indeed had searched 
him out in his lonely prison and comforted him, but he longed 
for his beloved child Timothy: 'Do thy diligence to come shortly 
unto me' (2 Timothy iv. verse 9). 

'Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, 
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which 
was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in 
us' (2 Timothy i. verses 13, 14). 

We have here a venerable Christian's counsel full of the cautious 
wisdom of old age. The fiery spirit that smote Judaizers in certain 
earlier Epistles is softened and mellowed by years. The letter 
reveals the tenderness of the x\postle's fatherly heart towards his 
beloved child Timothy, and the sweetness and affectionateness 
of the latter towards the Apostle, together with a certain timidity 
in the discharge of the duties of his office. 

'I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure con- 
science, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my 
prayers night and day; greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful 
of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; when I call to remem- 
brance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy 
grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice ; and I am persuaded 
that in thee also. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou 
thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of 
my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 509 

power, and of love, and of a sound mind' (2 Timothy i. verses 

3-7). 

This letter is particularly interesting as supplying the chief evi- 
dence concerning Paul's life after the close of the Acts of the 
Apostles. It mentions the second imprisonment and the second trial, 
as well as the missionary work in the interval between the two 
imprisonments. Its portrait of the aged Christian minister uncon- 
sciously given by its writer is even more interesting than the por- 
trait of the ideal minister which he sets before Timothy. 

One of the finest passages in the Epistle shows us the dauntless 
old missionary in sight of martyrdom which in the second imprison- 
ment he knew would be the end of his earthly life. 

'For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure 
is at hand. I have fought a good fight {i.e., run the good race), I 
have finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there 
is laid up for me a ('the,' R.V.) crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to 
me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing' (2 Timothy 
iv. verses 6-8). 

Though the authorship and the date of the Epistle to the He- 
brews cannot be fixed with any certainty, it is unquestionably one 
of the great writings of the New Testament. The author may 
possibly be St. Paul's friend and fellow-labourer Apollos, the 
learned Jew of Alexandria, for it shows a remarkable knowledge of 
Philo and bi the Book of Wisdom, .but can hardly be St. Paul, for 
the style and treatment are altogether unlike his. If the date can- 
not be exactly determined, the contents at any rate make it fairly 
certain that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 
70. Those who accept the conjecture of the authorship of Apollos 
might assume with some probability that it was addressed to Jewish 
Christians in the Church at Ephesus. It is at least certain that it 
was addressed to Jews who had accepted Christianity, and were in 
danger of relapsing into Judaism. The method of the writer of the 
Epistle adopted to help the Jewish Christians wavering under the 
pressure of persecution to remain true to Christ was to offer them 
a very full comparison of the two religions, Christianity and Jud- 
aism. The opening sentence introduces the main argument by 
stating that the gradual and imperfect revelation of the past has 
been completed in the final and perfect revelation in Jesus Christ. 

'God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time 
past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken 
unto us by his Son, v\"hom he hath appointed heir of all things, by 



5IO 'ALL HAIL' 

whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his 
glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all 
things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged 
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high' (He- 
brews i. verses 1-3). 

First the writer shows the superiority of Christ to the Prophets, 
then His superiority to the angels, then His superiority to Moses, 
then to Aaron, then he compares Christ's priesthood to what he 
considers a far simpler and profounder priesthood than the Leviti- 
cal, the primitive priesthood of Melchisedec, then he goes on to 
show the superiority of Christ, our High Priest, to the high priest 
of Judaism and the superiority of the New Covenant to the Old. 
This argument reaches its highest point in chapter ix. verses 23-26: 

'It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heav- 
ens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things them- 
selves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered 
into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the 
true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God 
for us : nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest 
entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others ; for 
then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world : 
but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away 
sin by the sacrifice of himself.' 

Thus the writer of the Epistle succeeds in proving very fully that, 
to abandon Christianity and return to Judaism, would be to ex- 
change the substance for the shadow. Christianity, by its great 
High Priest, gave that open access into the very Presence of God, 
of which Judaism could merely supply the symbolical representa- 
tion. 

'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the 
blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for 
us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh ; and having an high 
priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart 
in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil 
conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold 
fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is 
faithful that promised;) and let us consider one another to provoke 
unto love and to good works' (Hebrews x. verses 19-24). 

All the comparisons and arguments with which the Epistle dis- 
poses of the claims of Judaism are based on the firm conviction of 
the writer that Christianity is the supreme and final religion, the 
only religion that has solved the problem of reuniting man with 
God. This high conception of Christianity is based on a high 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 511 

conception of Christ's Person as a Divine Being, one with God, and 
Himself pre-existent and the Maker of the Universe. 

Peculiar to this author is the conception of earth as a place of 
shadows and heaven as a place of actual realities. 

The remaining chapters are chiefly occupied with the glowing 
panegyric of the heroes of faith which was intended to show the 
Jewish Christians that, as Christians, they were closely linked to 
the old patriarchs and prophets, as possessors of what these had 
longed for and looked for. The inferiority of Judaism to Chris- 
tianity stood confessed in the opinion of the author of the Epistle 
in the veil that separated worshippers from the most holy place. 
No such separation exists for the Christian. The most holy place 
is the open presence of God, into which Jesus has entered for us as 
our forerunner ; that is, one who goes on in advance to bring 
others after him. 

'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and 
stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil ; whither the 
forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for 
ever after the order of Melchisedec' (Hebrews vi. verses 19, 20). 

The hope of the Christian rests in the fact that Christ is his fore- 
runner and is carrying out His promise : T go to prepare a place 
for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may 
be also' (St. John xiv. verses 2, s)- 

We come now to the seven Catholic Epistles, one of which bears 
the name of St. James, two of St. Peter, three of St. John, and 
one of St. Jude. There are differences of opinion as to why the 
term Catholic has been given to the Epistles of this group. Prob- 
ably Catholic had in the beginning the sense of General ; that is to 
say. Catholic Epistles meant Circular or Encyclical Epistles. James, 
I and 2 Peter, Jude, and i John are addressed to wide circles of 
Christians in different lands, while 2 John, though its address to 
an individual is probable, was early taken to be addressed to the 
Church at large under the title of 'the Elect Lady;' and 3 John, 
though actually addressed to an individual, would naturally follow 
I and 2 John. These Epistles were first called Catholic in the East- 
ern Church, and from the sixth century Canonical in the Western. 
The first of this group is the general Epistle of St. James, which 
was addressed 'to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad' 
(James i. verse i) — that is, to the Jewish Christians of the Disper- 
sion — urging them to the patient endurance of their trials, and warn- 
ing them with practical piety against many faults of conduct as 
well as some errors of doctrine. St. James was one of the Lord's 



512 'ALL HAIL' 

brethren, but was not one of the twelve Apostles ; indeed, he was 
not even a believer till after the Resurrection. His conversion may 
probably be dated from the appearance of the Risen Lord to him, 
recorded in i Corinthians xv. verse 7. After the Ascension, he 
remained in Jerusalem in the company of the Apostles, waiting for 
the descent of the Holy Spirit, and ten years later we find him the 
head of the Church at Jerusalem, and in another fourteen years 
later ranked among the Pillar Apostles, and in front of St. Peter 
and St.( John. 'And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed 
to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they 
gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship ; that we 
should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision' (Gala- 
tians ii. verse 9). 

On St. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, St. James was presi- 
dent of the Council held to consider what were to be the terms of 
Gentile membership in the Christian Church. It was he who car- 
ried the momentous resolution not to trouble with the whole cere- 
monial law those Gentiles who turned to God. Again, when St. 
Paul returned from his third missionary journey, James, at the 
head of the elders of the Church, received him. It is interesting 
to observe that the speech recorded in Acts xv. at the second visit 
of St. Paul to Jerusalem, and the circular sent to Antioch by Judas 
and Silas declaring the terms of Gentile membership fixed by the 
Council, bear a striking likeness in their language to the language 
of this Epistle. Though the ordinary tongue used in the home at 
Nazareth was probably Aramaic, yet all round the Lake of Galilee 
Greek was in common use, and St. James would have required 
enough Greek there to enable him to write the Epistle. The mark 
of our Lord's influence on St. James is to be found in the latter's 
large knowledge and continual use of the teaching of Jesus, espec- 
ially of that teaching known to us as the Sermon on the Mount. 
The coincidences with our Lord's teaching reveal far deeper knowl- 
edge than if they were mere quotations, for they are the reproduc- 
tion, in other words, of ideas and thoughts which the disciple had 
fully assimilated from his Master. The date of the Epistle is 
probably a.d. 51, or even earlier, taking that as the date of the 
Apostolic Council; for if the Epistle were later, its author would 
have said something about the decision of the Council as to the 
admission of Gentile converts to the Church. St. James was cele- 
brated for his holy life. He was an ascetic as well as a man of 
deep piety. His great reputation for practical righteousness based 
on prayerfulness, gave him particular fitness to be head — Bishop, 
as we should call it — of the Jewish Christians and of the Church 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 513 

at Jerusalem, which he was in fact if not in name. He was called 
*Obliam,' the bulwark or defence of the people, and his Epistle 
deals with the dangers of wealth and the duty of brotherhood 
among Christians of all nations in a way that explains that title. 
Hegesippus is quoted by Eusebius as saying of him, 'His knees be- 
came hard like a camel's because he was always kneeling in the 
Temple, asking forgiveness for the people.' He was known as 
James the Just, or the Righteous One, and Clement of Alexandria 
states that Peter and James and John (the sons of Zebedee) elected 
James the Just to be Bishop of Jerusalem. 

The contents of his Epistle reflect and justify the character he 
bore. He condemned faith without works as a dead thing, not 
meaning to depreciate faith, but meaning to estimate that faith as 
valueless which has no effect on the conduct. Conduct was the 
fruit which Christ's religion was to produce in the members of his 
Church, and St. James drew attention to definite faults of con- 
duct, and dealt specially with the dangers that come from the mis- 
use of the tongue and from the misuse of riches. Christianity is a 
life, and St. James' warnings are by no means obsolete in the 
twentieth century. 

The first Epistle of Peter was written apparently by one who 
had studied the Epistle of James. It was addressed to members 
of the Christian Church in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and 
Bithynia, that is, in what we call Asia Minor. The Christians to 
whom St. Peter writes were some of them' converts from Judaism, 
but most of them from heathenism. They were evidently exposed 
to persecution, but hardly, one thinks, to persecution directed by the 
State. 'Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's 
sake : whether it be to the king, as supreme ; or unto governors, as 
unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, 
and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, 
that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish 

men Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear 

God. Honour the king' (i Peter ii. verses 13, 15, 17). 

Had the great persecution of the Christians by Nero begun, it is 
inconceivable that the writer of the Epistle would have used such 
language concerning the Emperor and concerning the Provincial 
Governors 'sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for 
the praise of them that do well.' Plainly the Neronian persecu- 
tion had not yet begun. The Christians nevertheless had to face 
the ill-will and ill-usage of their heathen neighbours. 'Beloved, 
think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, 
as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, in- 



514 'ALL HAIL' 

asmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his 
glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. 
If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the 
spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you : on their part he is 
evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you 
suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busy- 
body in other men's matters. Yet, if any man suffer as a Christian, 
let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf (i 
Peter iv. verses 12-16). 

From this passage it is apparent that the sufferings at this time 
largely consisted of reproach and slander from' Gentiles who, in the 
language of i Peter iv. verse 4, 'think it strange that ye run not with 
them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you,' 

Many other passages, such as i Peter iii. 9 and iii. 16, are not 
compatible with a State-directed persecution, while quite in keep- 
ing with a campaign of slander and insult to which their silent 
condemnation of heathen revelry and licentiousness by holding aloof 
from it often exposed the Christians. Even in the days when St. 
Paul with good reason regarded the Empire as the protector of the 
Church from Jewish and heathen lawlessness, he and Barnabas 
assured their converts in Asia Minor 'that we must through much 
tribulation enter into the kingdom of God' (Acts xiv. verse 22). 
There is good reason to believe that St. Peter wrote from' Rome, 
to which he had been summoned by St. Paul during his first im- 
prisonment, in order that the Apostle of the Circumcision, Peter, 
might join with the Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, in teaching the 
great Church of Rome the necessary lesson of Christian unity. If 
St. Peter wrote soon after St. Paul's release on his acquittal after 
a trial before the Emperor, his language about the civil power, the 
Emperor and the Provincial Governors, is perfectly natural. The 
purpose of St. Peter's letter, which was sent by Silvanus, who was 
probably St. Paul's messenger, seems to have been to give a lesson 
in Christian unity to the Churches in Asia Minor, which could not 
fail to be impressed by a letter from the Apostle of the Circumcis- 
ion, brought by a companion and friend of the Apostle of the 
Uncircumcision, St. Paul. Supposing that Silvanus was going as 
St. Paul's delegate to endeavour to unify the Churches in Asia 
Minor, the fact of being a bearer of a letter from St. Peter would 
greatly assist his purpose. We find, as we would expect in a letter 
by St. Peter, plain notes of an eye-witness of the life of our Lord, 
such as I Peter v. verse i : 'The elders which are among you I ex- 
hort, whom am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of 
Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 515 

In this he claims authority as an eye-witness of the sufferings of 
Christ. An instance of this witness-bearing is to be found in i 
Peter ii. verse 23 : 'Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again ; 
when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him 
that judgeth righteously.' 

Apparently this is a memory of what the writer saw at the in- 
formal and brutal trial of our Lord in the High Priest's palace. 
So in I Peter v. verse 5 : 'Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves 
unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be 
clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth 
grace to the humble,' the words 'clothed with humility' are a re- 
membrance of the scene in the Upper Room when the Lord girded 
Himiself with a towel and washed Peter's and the other disciples' 
feet. There are, in this Epistle, many memories of the Lord's 
teaching as recorded in the first three Gospels, and some of the 
teaching recorded in St. John. It it is worth noting that the whole 
of St. Paul's Epistles supply a list of coincidences with the Gospels 
less considerable in number than this short first Epistle of St. 
Peter. To St. Peter the Christian Church's universal brotherhood 
and the duty of brotherly love and unity come from the common 
relationship of Christians to the one Father in Heaven. Unity in 
the face of heathen hostility is the attitude enjoined. Almost 
every exhortation in this Epistle is connected with our Lord's ex- 
ample, or with His Passion or with His Crucifixion, or with His 
Resurrection, or with His Return. In this Epistle too is to be 
found the only direct statement of that most mysterious part of 
our Lord's redemptive work, which is referred to in our Creed, in 
the words 'He descended into hell.' The first of the two passages 
is found in i Peter iii. verses 18-20: 'For Christ also hath once 
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to 
God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit : 
by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 
which sometime were disobedient when once the longsuffering of 
God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, 
wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.' This 
passage deals with the case of those who died in the great judgment 
of the Flood, the typical judgment of antiquity, selected as represen- 
tative rebels against God, and the statement is perfectly plain that 
the Saviour of the world preached or proclaimed the Gospel to 
these disobedient spirits in prison in the Unseen World. 

With this passage is to be taken i Peter iv. verse 6: 'For this 
cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they 
might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according 



Si6 'ALL HAIL' 

to God in the spirit.' The purpose of the preaching is stated in this 
second passage to be that the dead though judged already after 
the pattern of men in the flesh (i.e. the earthly life) may live after 
the pattern of God in the spirit. These passages undoubtedly seem 
to give a vast extension to our view of our Lord's redemptive 
work. His journey to the Unseen World, and His proclamation of 
the Gospel to the spirits in prison, give a nobler and more universal 
range to the Redeemer's victory. It is remarkable to that St. Peter 
alone among the Twelve refers to the descent into Hell in His 
sermon on the Day of Pentecost. If it be asked, Whence did 
Peter derive this knowledge of the preaching to the dead in the 
Unseen World? the reasonable answer is: From the one possible 
source, the Divine Preacher Himself, the Lord Jesus during the 
forty days after His Resurrection, before the Ascension. 

These are only a few of the passages which deserve careful study 
in this beautiful Epistle. 

The second Epistle of St. Peter differs in style from the first. Its 
contents are less valuable, and its authenticity is less strongly sup- 
ported by internal and external evidence. The writer refers in the 
first chapter to two experiences of his life as one of the inner circle 
of the disciples during our Lord's earthly ministry. They both 
occur in the first chapter. 

In 2 Peter i. verse 14: 'Knowing that shortly I must put off this 
my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me,' he 
refers to what our Lord had told him concerning his death on an 
Occasion which is recorded in St. John xxi. verses 18, 19: 'Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thy- 
self, and walkedst whither thou wouldest : but when thou shalt be 
old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, 
and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signify- 
ing by what death he should glorify God.' 

The other passage is the interesting reference to the Transfigura- 
tion, in verses 16, 17, and 18: 'For we have not followed cunningly 
devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but where eyewitnesses of his 
majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, 
when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory. This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice 
which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the 
holy mount.* 

The Epistle was evidently written in Peter's old age, and when 
long delay had shaken the confidence of many in a visible and im- 
mediate return. The main purpose of the Epistle was to warn the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 517 

Christians to whom it was addressed against the false teachers, 
whose doctrinal errors issued in immoral life. 

In support of the old view of the authorship of the two Epistles 
of Peter, it may be said that there are a large number of features 
of resemblance between the Epistles, while there are of course a 
great many differences of style. A considerable number of coinci- 
dences have been noticed between Peter's speeches recorded in the 
Acts of the Apostles and this Epistle. The manifest differences of 
style between the two Epistles may perhaps be accounted for by 
the fact (which we know from Papias) that Peter used an interpre- 
ter, and may possibly have had the service of a different interpreter 
for each Epistle to translate what he had to say into Greek. But 
when all is said in admission of the inferiority of the second 
Epistle to the first, it must be added that, at any rate in the 
Authorised Version, there are passages that are not wanting in 
digniy and even in grandeur. For instance (2 Peter i. verses 
19-21): 'We have also a more sure word of prophecy: whereunto 
ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a 
dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your 
hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of 
any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time 
by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost' 

And again: 'Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, 
what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation 
and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day 
of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and 
the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, ac- 
cording to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that 
ye look for such thing, be diligent that ye may be found of him 
in peace, without spot, and blameless Ye therefore, be- 
loved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being 
led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own sted- 
fastness. But grow in grace, and in knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Chrfst. To him be glory both now and for ever. 
Amen' (2 Peter iii. verses 11-14, 17, 18). 

The three Epistles of St. John were in use in the Church at an 
early date, the first Epistle by the middle of the second century. 
That the Epistles were written by the author of the Gospel is mani- 
fest on the internal evidence alone. The calm, transparent style, 
the simple way of saying deep things is the same in the Epistles 
as in the Gospel. The letters, like the Gospel, were probably writ- 



5i8 'ALL HAIL' 

ten at Ephesits, where St. John's later years were passed in organiz- 
ing the Churches in Asia, till his death at a great age in the days 
of Trajan. 

The first Epistle begins with a characteristic impersonal refer- 
ence to the fact of John's intimacy with the Risen Lord, whom he 
recognises as the manifestation of that eternal life which is with 
the Father. His object in addressing his readers was that they 
might have fellowship with him and those Christians with whom he 
classes himself, and so share his fellowship with God. His mes- 
sage is briefly this : 'God is light, and in him is no darkness at all* 
(i John i. verse 5). From this it follows that to walk in the light 
is necessary for this fellowship with God. On this walking in the 
light depends also our fellowship with our fellow-men and our 
cleansing from sin by the blood of Christ. If we claim to have no 
sin, we deceive ourselves ; but if we confess our sins, we are for- 
given. The aim of St. John's Epistle is to instruct his converts — 
'my little children,' as he affectionately calls them (i John ii. verse 
i) — not to sin, but he adds, conscious that sin will not be alto- 
gether avoided : 'And if any man sin, we have an advocate with 
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous : and he is the propitiation 
for our sins : and not for our only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world' (i John ii. verses i, 2). Here it may be noticed that the 
word 'Paraclete' (advocate) is in St. John's Gospel employed to 
signify the Holy Ghost, but here used directly of our Lord. 

From fellowship with God the thought passes on to knowledge 
of God, the essential of which is simple obedience to God's com- 
mandments. He warns his readers against false prophets, on whom' 
from time to time he flashes his righteous wrath, returning again 
and again to his favourite subjects — ^the keeping of the law of 
love and the keeping of the law of righteousness. From the former 
we may learn to anticipate the verdict of the Day of Judgment. 

'We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we 
love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death' 
(i John iii. verse 14). 

To walk in the light he sees it is necessary above all things to 
love God and also to love our brethren, by which he means the 
members of the Christian Church. 

'Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; and every 
one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth 
not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested 
the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only be- 
gotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 519 

Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved 
us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at 
any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his 
love is perfected in us' (i John iv. verses 7-12). 

In this Epistle God is light : 'God is light, and in him is no 
darkness at all' (i John i, verse S) ; 'God is love' (i John iv. verse 
8) — profound thoughts conveyed in the very simplest language. 
Christ is the Son, the Only Begotten, who was with the Father in 
the beginning, before He was born in a human form into the world. 
The powers of evil are described by St. John in their widest and 
most comprehensive form as The World, in which are to be found 
many evil spirits, chiefest of which is the Spirit called Antichrist. 
Antichrist in the Epistles is not an enemy which assails the Church 
from without, but a false teacher within the Church that denies 
essential doctrines (i John ii. verse 18) : 'And as ye have heard 
that antichrist will come, so now there are many antichrists.' So 
also I John iv. verse 3. 'Eternal life' in this Epistle is the life of 
the Father revealed in Christ. It is a new kind of life, a life of 
goodness begun here, perfected hereafter. This great idea of 
eternal life, common to the Epistle and the Gospel, occurs relatively 
to its length more frequently in the Epistle,, where it is found six 
times to seventeen times in the Gospel. This eternal life is present 
here and now, and it is ours only in union with Christ. 

'And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and 
this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that 
hath not the Son of God hath not life' (i John v. verses 11, 12). 
Those who, as sons of God, have eternal life here have a yet 
brighter destiny to look forward to. 

'Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be : but we know that when he shall appear, we shall 
be like him; for we shall see him as he is' (i John iii. verse 2). 

The second Epistle of St. John, like the first, was probably writ- 
ten from Ephesus, and is addressed to the Elect Lady, which is 
thought by some to be a figurative expression for an individual 
Church and by others for the Church generally. 

If it be addressed to a Church it is probably one of the Asian 
Churches, but the private and personal character of the second 
Epistle, and the fact that the third is addressed to an individual 
by name, rather favour the idea that the Epistle was addressed to 
a Christian lady, of whom we know nothing except what we read 
in this Epistle. We gather from its contents that it was written 
as a warning against certain Docetic teachers of he Gnostic type 
already condemned in the first Epistle. The second letter does not 



520 ' ALL HAIL ' 

enter at once on its subject as does the first letter, but begins with 
courteous personal greetings and personal commendation, such as 
we are accustomed to in St. Paul's Epistles. St. John goes on with 
affectionate tenderness to insist on the keeping of the commandment, 
'Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that 
which we had from the beginning, that we love one another' (2 
John, verse 5). It may be noted that the very words in which 
this commandment was given by our Lord are reproduced here: 'A 
new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as 
I have loved you, that ye also love one another' (St. John xiii. 
verse 34). The same idea and even the same words were evidently 
in the mind of the Apostle. The letter goes on to condemn certain 
deceivers who confessed not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, 
that is, in the full reality of human nature. These heretics whose 
heresy was that of Cerinthus, he identifies with Antichrist. He re- 
minds his readers that fellowship with God can only be had by 
fidelity to the teaching of Christ. Then with that sternness against 
evil which belongs to intense devotion to the truth, he gives the 
order, 'If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, re- 
ceive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed : for he 
that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds' (2 John, 
verses lo-ii). The Epistle closes with a salutation to the Lady to 
whom' the letter is addressed from the children of her elect sister. 
The third Epistle is as short as the second and is certainly ad- 
dressed to an individual, 'the well-beloved Gaius' (3 John, verse i). 
As for the place and date, it was probably written, like the other 
Epistles, at Ephesus, after the Gospel, towards the close of St. 
John's long life. We know nothing about Gaius, except what comes 
out in the letter, for we can hardly identify him with Gaius of 
Corinth, Paul's host, because both bore the same name, and were 
distinguished for hospitality. St. John's intention of seeing Gaius 
shortly face to face and telling him the many things he had to com- 
municate, but was unwilling to commit to paper, suggests that this 
visit may have been part of the work of Apostolic visitation, which 
we know that he carried out in the neighbourhood of Ephesus. 
Clement is quoted by Eusebius to the effect that John, after the 
death of Domitian (96 a.d.) 'coming from the isle of Patmos to 
Ephesus, went also when called to the neighbouring regions of the 
Gentiles, in some to appoint bishops, in some to institute entire 
new churches, in others to appoint to the ministry some one of 
those that were pointed out by the H'oly Ghost.' The Epistle ap- 
pears to have been written in the following circumstances. Certain 
brethren, strangers, who were travelling through the Churches, 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 521 

most probably as missionaries, had come to St. John and had re- 
ported to him the hospitable treatment, and the brotherly love 
Gains had shown to them. St. John praised him warmly for this, 
and told him how well these brethren deserved a brotherly recep- 
tion. Hospitality was an essential of those early days of Chris- 
tianity. Neither the travelling preachers nor the travellers who 
came with letters could be allowed to stay at heahen inns, where 
the morals were even worse than the accommodation. 'Because 
that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the 
Gentiles' (3 John, verse 7). But the purpose of the letter was not 
only to express the aged Apostle's pleasure at the well-doing of 
Gaius, but also to express his indignation at the misconduct of a 
certain Diotrephes. This man not only refused to receive the 
brethren, but had forbidden others to receive them. A pushing 
and ambitious man, heh^d disowned the authority of the Apostle. 
'Wherefore,' writes St. John, 'if I come, I will remember his deeds 
which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words : and not 
content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and 
forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the Church' 
(3 John, verse 10). The warning that follows is a specimen of 
that impressive Hebrew parallelism which characterises St. John's 
style: "Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is 
good. He that doeth good is of God : but he that doeth evil hath not 
seen God' (3 John, verse 11). The letter, after bearing witness to the 
worth of one Demetrius, in language which is as characteristic of 
St. John as the rest of the composition, ends with a benediction and 
salutation. This letter gives an interesting glimpse of the life of 
the Christian Churches that were under the oversight of the last 
of the Apostles, probably about the close of the first century. It 
was just at the point of transition from the Apostolic age when the 
ministry of travelling preachers had not yet completely given way 
to the localised, fully organized ministry. It has been conjectured 
that Diotrephes was the first aggressive champion of the new order 
against the old, and certainly he seems to have regarded the 
brethren whom Gaius had received so lovingly rather as intruders 
to be cast out than as fellow-Christians to be welcomed. 

The Epistle of St. Jude was written by the Lord's brother Jude 
or Judas. Like the rest of the Lord's brethren, he did not believe 
in Christ till after the Resurrection. In the first verse of the Epistle 
he styles himself a 'bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of 
James.' The place in which it was written was probably Jerusalem', 
where the brethren of the Lord would naturally hold a place of 
some influence, owing to the long headship of St. James. From the 



522 'ALL HAIL' 

internal evidence of the letter, it was clearly addressed to a Church 
composed of Gentiles or mainly of Gentiles. St. Jude writes about 
'our common salvation' (Jude, verse 3) as a Jewish Christian to 
Gentile Christians, and the abuses condemned are very much the 
same as St. Paul found in the Church at Corinth. They came 
from the presence in the Christian brotherhood of Gentiles who had 
not abandoned the immorality and irreverence of their old life. 
The danger was not false doctrine, but vicious example. St. Jude 
therefore feels forced to call upon them to contend earnestly for 
the faith against the depravity of the men who had crept in among 
them, and by their misconduct were practically denying the only 
Master and Lord. In support of his case he gives instances of the 
destruction that comes as God's judgment on fleshly lusts. Sodom 
and Gomorrah are among the instances given. In addition to their 
viciousness, these lawless brethren refused to submit to authority, 
and spoke evil of the rulers of the Church. They did not hesitate 
to bring their greed and irreverence to the most sacred service, 
the love-feast and the Eucharist which followed. 'These are spots 
('hidden rocks,' R.V.) in your feasts of charity, when they feast 
with you' (Jude, verse 12). 

On the attitude that should be observed by the Church towards 
these depraved men, he gives some eminently judicious and charit- 
able advice. They are not to treat them all alike. On the least guilty 
they are to have compassion, 'on some have mercy, who are in doubt, 
some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy 
with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh' (Jude, 
verses 22, 23, R.V.). The Epistle ends with an ascription which is 
not easy to surpass: 'Now unto him that is able to keep you from 
falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his 
glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our SaA^our, be 
glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen' 
(Jude, verses 24, 25). 

As to the date of the Epistle, there is so much knowledge of 
St. Paul's Epistles shown that it may be assigned to a period within 
a year or two of the Pastoral Epistles and i Peter. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 
The Revelation of S.t John the Divine. 

This Book, wihch stands last in the Bible, is generally considered 
the most obscure and difficult of all the Books, but the obscurity and 
difficulty, though real, have never been able to hide from Christians 
its main message and its main purpose. The message is : the Com- 
ing of Christ to Churches and Nations, as well as to individuals ; and 
the purpose is : to prepare them by repentance and faith to be ready 
and rejoice to receive Him at His coming. The Revelation is really 
a continuation of the Gospels. As the Gospels describe our Lord's 
earthly life and His mighty works in Galilee and Judsea, so the Reve- 
lation describes His heavenly life in His Church and the spiritual 
miracles by which He aids it in its struggle with evil. The descrip- 
tion of this heavenly life of the Risen Lord is made by means of an 
elaborate symbolism which is designed to enable the Churches to feel 
the reality of the Lord's Coming. 

The Book is largely composed of Visions of the Coming, and 
though the details of these Visions may not always be possible to 
explain, yet enough is within the reach of the intelligent reader 
to enable him to receive the essential part of the Revelation or Un- 
veiling of the Divine Spirit of the Ascended Lord. 

While not attempting a detailed commentary on the contents, our 
endeavour will be to make the Book easier to understand. The super- 
scription of the Book, which does not occur in the earlier manu- 
scripts, is the Revelation of St. John the Divine, 'the Divine' being 
in the original, 'the theologian,' a title which well describes the 
author of the loftiest theology in the Bible, that of the Gospel which 
bears his name, as well as of this Book and of the Epistles. 

A better superscription can be found in the words of the first verse. 
That verse states that it is the Revelation of Christ, not of John, 
but made through John, 'and he sent and signified it' (that is, showed 
it by means of signs) 'by his angel to his servant John.' What was 
to be shown were the 'things which must shortly come to pass' 
(verse i). And thus the Book itself guides us to seek in the 
circumstances and history of the time, the clue to its meaning. 

The Book had primarily to be understood by the generation of 
Christians to whom' it was addressed, and readers to-day must 

523 



524 'ALL HAIL' 

try to put themselves in the place of the first readers; and then, 
understanding the meaning as they understood it, as far as this is 
possible, go on to apply it to what is analogous in their own cir- 
cumstances and times. The Unveiling of Christ in this Book is 
intended to be realised as being as true to-day as when it was 
written. 

The Revelation was given in the Island of Patmos, a small 
volcanic island off the coast of Asia Minor, to which St. John was 
banished, as a Christian ; no doubt on account of his influential 
position among the Churches of the mainland. Such a banishment 
for religion regarded as dangerous by the Emperor involved hard 
labour in fetters under a taskmaster's whip. Life under such con- 
ditions was a living entombment, and certainly entitled the Apostle 
to describe himself in writing to the persecuted Churches as 'your 
companion in tribulation.' Some connection between the imagery of 
some of the visions and the earthquakes and volcanic disturbances 
of that region may be found in such passages as this : 'And as it 
were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea' 
(Revelation viii. verse 8). 

It may be remembered that there had been an eruption of the 
volcano of Santorin, an island not far off, not many years before, 
and Laodicea had been destroyed by earthquakes as recently as 60 

A.D. 

It Vv'as on the Lord's Day, that is, the first day of the week, already 
consecrated and so named from the Lord's Resurrection, that the 
Vision of Christ came to the prisoner of Patmos, and the Divine 
Voice, speaking in the depths of his soul, gave him the messages 
to send to the Churches of Asia, addressed to the seven principal 
Churches, as representatives of all. The Vision of Christ is de- 
scribed in language taken from the Old Testament books of Daniel 
and Ezekiel. 

The mind of St. John was so steeped in Old Testament prophecy 
that he used the old language to express his own new thoughts. In 
this description of Christ (chapter i. verses 12-17) the portraits of 
the Son of Man and of the Ancient of Days in Daniel vii., and the 
portrait of the Angel in Daniel x., have been freely Lised to describe 
an independent vision; the details taken from the Ancient of Days 
being an impressive assertion of the Lord's Divinity. The Divine 
figure is clothed with a garment down to the feet, a garment denot- 
ing Kingly and Priestly dignity. His head and His hair are de- 
scribed as white, not with age, but with the intensity of outflowing 
light. His eyes are as a flame of fire with burning indignation 
against evil, embodying the meaning of 'our God is a consuming fire' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 525 

(Hebrews xii. verse 29). 'His feet were like unto burnished brass 
as if it had been refined in a furnace, and his voice as the voice of 
many waters' (R.V.)- This description is takjen from Daniel, 
except that for the description of the voice a simile from Ezekiel 
(xliii. verse 2) is substituted. 'Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp 
two-edged sword' (verse 16) : 'the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
word of God' (Ephesians vi. verse 17). The description concludes 
with these words : 'And his countenance was as the sun shineth in 
his strength.' The sun, the light and the life of all on the earth, is 
the best comparison that could be found for 'the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' 

The whole description brings to our minds an event of which St. 
John had been an eye-witness, the Transfiguration. 

Before the feet of the Risen Lord the Apostle fell in worshipping 
adoration. Tenderly the Christ laid His right hand on the disciple 
who had lain on his Master's breast at the Last Supper, and said : 
'Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the Living One: and I 
was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the Keys 
of Death and of Hades' — the Unseen World (R.V., Revelation i* 
verses 17, 18) . 

With reference to this, we may remember the Lord's words on 
the Cross to the dying thief beside Him : 'To-day shalt thou be with 
me in paradise.' 

The Apostle is told to write to the Seven Churches. It was not 
that there were not many other Churches in Asia Minor, but these 
seven were the representative Churches and stand here for the 
whole province, each being the chief among a group. Seven is the 
number which runs through the whole Book as being the ideal, or 
perfect number. The Risen Lord is identified with the Spirit which 
speaks through St. John to the Churches: 'He that hath an ear let 
him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.' This is repeated 
in the letter to each Church. The Risen Lord Himself explains that 
the seven candlesticks among which he walks represent the Seven 
Churches, and thus, that He is ever present in the midst of His 
Churches. 

The Churches are represented by candlesticks, as being light-bear- 
ers to mankind: 'Ye are the light of the world.' 'Let your light 
so shine.' 

The first message or letter is to the Angel of the Church of 
Ephesus, that is, the ideal in heaven which is represented by the 
Church on earth. This Church, of which we heard in a chapter 
dealing with St. Paul, if founded by Priscilla and Aquila, was of St. 
Paul's building up, and it is pleasant to find that he had not laboured 



526 'ALL HAIL' 

in vain. St. Paul had fought hard against Antinomianism, a making 
of terms with heathenism., a turning of Christian libert}'- into licence, 
and the Church in Ephesus is praised by St. John for its attitude 
towards a sect holding these dangerously fashionable false opinions, 
the Nicolaitanes. Thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which 
I also hate' (Revelation ii. verse 6). 

The name came probably from a false claim that the sect had been 
founded by Nicloas the deacon. Much praise is given to this Church 
for its patience and endurance for 'my name's sake,' but it is warned 
against backsliding: it is told to remember how well it began, and 
to return to its former position, 'thy first love.' 

The next Epistle is to the Church in Smyrna. This city was very 
wealthy and a great trading centre, but the Church was poor in 
worldy goods, though rich spiritually. The Church was in danger of 
persecution, probably to force its members to submit to the prevalent 
Emperor-worship. There was a temple here to the wicked Emperor 
Tiberius, and the worship of such a creature might well be de- 
scribed as devil-worship. 'Behold, the devil shall cast some of you 
into prison, that ye may be tried' (verse lo). 

The promise to the persecuted Christians is a beautiful one: 'Be 
thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life' (verse 
lo) ; or, paraphrased : 'Instead of your proud crown of buildings I 
will give you the victor's crown of life.' The aged Polycarp, Bishop 
of Smyrna, died a martyr, a.d. 155. 

The third Epistle is to the Church in Pergamos (R.V., Pergamum) 
This was an ancient city, the capital of Asia in the time of Augus- 
tus. Here was the first temple built for Emperor-worship and dedi- 
cated to Augustus. Emperor-worship is treated as the chief enemy 
of Christ throughout the Revelation, and is identified with Satan 
and Antichrist, though the latter word does not occur. 

Accordingly, the Epistle describes the town as the place, 'where 
Satan's throne ('seat,' (.V.) is,' that is the chief centre of the evil 
worship. The persecution had been going on some time here, and 
a martyr is mentioned by name: 'Antipas, my faithful martyr.' 
Probably the reason fo this is thas he was the first martyr, and died 
for his refusal to join in this worship. Executions of Christians 
ordered by the Roman Government would take place here as the 
capital city of the province. With all their fidelity, the Church in 
Pergamum had tolerated the teaching of the Nicolaitanes, and now 
received Christ's solemn warning to repent. 

The fourth Epistle is to the Church at Thyatira, a rich and pow- 
erful commercial town in Asia. Here, as in all these Epistles, full 
credit is given for all well-doing of the Church addressed. After 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 527 

this comes the complaint — in this case a serious one : Thou sufferest 
the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, and she 
teacheth and seduceth my servants to commit fornication and eat 
things sacrificed to idols' (Revelation ii. verse 20). 

It is evident that this woman was a definite person, and the 
question is, who? The description is of a woman who was a pro- 
phetess in the Christian Church, like Philip the Evangelist's four 
daughters, like Ammia of Philadelphia, and many other women of 
light and leading in the first century. 

The fact is, that a great difficulty which met the early converts from 
Paganism is referred to here. 

In the Asian cities and, indeed, all over the Empire, trade guilds 
existed, and were highly prized and extremely efficient. This is 
well known in Asia Minor from the inscriptions, and we can re- 
member this fact at Ephesus in the account of St. Paul's work there 
and the hostile faction of Demetrius the silversmith. 

Great advantages, both social and financial, accrued from the 
membership of the guild. It was a sort of club, and brought men 
together, and was regarded as almost essential to the business of 
many trades. It was a great power of union, which, however, de- 
pended on a common religion and a common sacrificial meal. Thus 
the bond of union was a heathen god. This involved idolatry, and 
the common meal was apt to degenerate into revelry, and too much 
wine led often to immorality. Yet such was the convenience and 
attractiveness of these guilds that they had not yet been condemned 
by the Church at Thyatira ; and indeed a chief teacher in that church 
had championed the cause of compromise, and continued to do so 
only too successfully. 

It had clearly not been decided there, though it had been in 
Ephesus, whether membership of a heathen trade guild was per- 
missible to a Christian. This marks an early stage of Christian 
development, and supports an early date for the Book of the Reve- 
lation. Some time before this St. Paul had condemend such mixing 
in heathen social life as 'fellowship with devils,' in his first Epistle 
to the Corinthians (chapter x. verse 20). The 'bed' mentioned in 
Revelation ii. verse 22, really means a banqueting couch, and the 
meaning is that the scene of revelry is to become the scene of retri- 
bution. 

What was the action of the Apostles as regards this difficult ques- 
tion? An order of 'no compromise' was the Apostolic decision, as 
we see here, and the toleration of the practice of Church members 
belonging to a heathen club was before long abandoned. Perhaps 



528 'ALL HAIL* 

this staunchnss to principle had more to do with the ultimate victory 
of Christianity than appears on the surface. 

The difficuty was a real one. To obey St. John meant to an artisan 
of Thyatira not only to lose pleasant social intercourse, but to 
risk loss of employment and loss of money. It is interesting to 
compare their difficulties then with our to-day. A somewhat analo- 
gous case to-day would be the custom of treating in public-houses 
to facilitate business. A working man may not only find it pleasant 
to meet acquaintances in public-houses, but helpful in getting em- 
ployment, and not invariably leading to drunkenness. The public- 
house is practically his club-house; and the question is, as in the 
case of the trade guilds at Thyatira, whether the associations and 
influence of the use of the place are elevating or the reverse. A very 
plausible case, no doubt, was made out on the surface by 'Jezebel,' 
the influential woman who taught that membership in a heathen club 
was perfectly permissible to a Christian. But St. John vehemently 
condemned the practice, and denounced the bare toleration of such 
teaching; and the Church accepted his decision and St. Paul's, and 
the practice had to go. 

How uncompromisingly would St. John have branded the English 
Bishops who patronise Vivisection, though it involves cruel injustice 
to the animal under experiment and the habitual suppression of 
Christ-like compassion in the experimenter ! 

The fifth Epistle is addressed to the Church at Sardis, which was 
the capital of Lydia, an ancient but decaying city. The message 
alludes plainly to the former greatness of the city (Revelation iii. 
verses i), 'Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead,' and 
again to the want of watchfulness which had twice resulted in the 
loss of the citadel. It may be observed here that these Epistles con- 
tain unmistakable allusions to the past history of each of the cities to 
which they are addressed, as well as to the actual condition of the 
Churches themselves. 

The Church of Sardis was evidently drifting into decay like the 
decaying town, and want of watchfulness was causing loss in spirit- 
ual things as it had done before to the town in material things. 
But though the unpleasant facts are faced in the Letter, the Great 
Head of the Churches does not fail to recognise the faithful few : 
'Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their 
garments, and they shall walk with me in white' (Revelation iii. 
verse 4), i.e., in the purity of a Christlike life. 

The sixth Letter is to the Church of Philadelphia, and is, like 
that to Smyrna, of almost unqualified approval. Philadelphia was 
a strong and wealthy city on the slopes of Mount Tmolus. It was 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 529 

a newly established Church with a great opening before it: T have 
set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it' (verse 8). It 
had a difficulty which it shared with other cities : 'A synagogue of 
Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie' (verse 9). 
This apparently means that the Jews not only bitterly opposed 
Christianity, but made common cause with heathenism against it, 
as at a later date they helped to burn Polycarp at Smyrna. Of this 
Church (and the same is true of others), the Spirit says T know thy 
works .... because thou hast kept the word of my patience, 
I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come 
upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth' (verses 
8-10). This prediction was perhaps primarily fulfilled in the general 
persecution under Domitian not many years after. 

The seventh and last Epistle is to Laodicea, a town a few miles 
from Colosse, which had become very powerful and wealthy under 
Roman rule. It had been destroyed a few years before by earthquake, 
and so proud of its wealth were its citizens that they rebuilt the town 
themselves, thinking it beneath them to accept help from the Roman 
Emperor, such as other great cities had already obtained. The self- 
confident attitude of the citizens had not unnaturally repeated itself 
in the Church. Self-satisfaction had led to lukewarmness, and luke- 
warmness the Head of the Church condemns more severely than 
any other state. Revelation iii. verses 15-18: T know thy works, that 
thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So 
then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will 
spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and 
increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not 
that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and 
naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that 
thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be 
clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and 
anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.' 

This condemnation is intended to open the eyes of the Laodiceans 
to their real condition. Laodicea was a great banking centre, and 
the message seems to imply that the Church is not to depend on 
bankers, but on Christ for the true wealth ; not on the black woollen 
cloth for which the town was famous, but on the white raiment of 
righteousness which Christ alone can bestow; and not on the cele- 
brated local eye-salve called Phrygian Powder, manufactured in 
tablets in the town for weak eyesight, but on the spiritual eye-salve 
for dimness of spiritual sight, which Christ is ready to provide, 
and had indeeed provided to some extent in His warning in this 
Epistle. The message may be summarised thus: Do not depend on 



S30 'ALL HAIL' 

yourself. Come to Christ, or rather receive Him who has come to 
you. The Divine Lover of man explains His severity: 'As many 
as I love, I rebuke and chasten : be zealous therefore, and repent. 
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If any man hear my voice, 
and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and 
he with me' (verses 19, 20). 

A beautiful promise this to the very faulty Church of Laodicea, and 
to any and every man also who listens to that voice to-day as 
then, and welcomes the advent of the Christ-spirit. One m'aj'' notice, 
also, that the promise 'to him who overcometh,' which has been 
made in different forms in all the other Epistles, is made in its 
highest form in this last one: 'To him that overcometh will I grant 
to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set 
down with my Father in his throne' (Revelation iii. verse 21). 

The reason why this promise to him that overcometh was made 
in all the Epistles is because overcoming is the shortest and most 
practical statement of the life-work of all the Churches, i.e., over- 
coming evil with good. A glorious destiny is set before the Church, 
and also before the individual who, whatever his faults or failures, 
perseveres and overcomes in himself the power of evil. Our Lord's 
idea of what constitutes a Church is brought before us by the col- 
lective teaching of all these Epistles. That idea is not the idea 
of a select and exclusive body of very superior persons, far above 
the ordinary level, but of a brotherhood of ordinary men and women 
who are learning Christ ; who are united by common faith to Him as 
Head, and to one another as members of His Body, the Church, 
striving to make the old common life of man a new one by living 
it in a new spirit; fortified by common worship and common sacra- 
ments, and the consciousness of the great fellowship in which they 
walk towards the perfect life of Heaven. Most of the Churches 
addressed are full of grave faults which are treated with loving 
severity; but faultiness is evidently regarded as a condition to be 
expected in the life of a Church on earth. 

Repentance for sin is required in the corporate life of the Church, 
as well as in the individual life of the believer, and the Lord helps 
that repentance, and as the weakest and most erring Church is 
helped by Him, so the weakest and most erring member is to be 
helped by the Church he belongs to. The Spirit of the Lord and the 
Example of the Lord are the power of the Church's deepest life, as 
indeed the word Church signifies, being taken from the Greek 
word meaning 'belonging to the Lord,' which, joined with the Greek 
word meaning an assembly, gives us the full meaning of 'Church' 
as 'the assembly belonging to the Lord.' 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 531 

We must now turn from the first part of the Book, which ends 
with the Epistle to Laodicea, to the second part which begins with 
the fourth chapter and ends with the twenty-second. The second 
part resembles the first in its arrangement, that is to say, it is ar- 
ranged in sevens. As there are seven Epistles to seven Churches, 
so there are seven seals, seven trumpets, seven angels, seven thun- 
ders, seven vials, seven plagues, seven mystic figures. Seven, denoting 
completion, is the chief number in the Book, occurring altogether 
fifty-four times. Even the dragon as the rival of Christ has seven 
heads, as has the wild beast from the sea and the scarlet beast on 
which Babylon is seated. 

This symbolical use of numbers is not confined to seven. Twelve 
comes next. The woman, the mother of Christ, has a crown of 
twelve stars, the new Jerusalem has twelve gates and twelve founda- 
tion stones; and ten and four are also favourite numbers. The 
subject of this great series of Visions is the Coming of Christ in 
judgment, and the results of that Coming to His enemies and fol- 
lowers respectively. These Visions open in the fourth chapter with 
the vision of Heaven, the imagery of which is largely taken from 
Ezekiel. The language is borrowed, but the spirit which breathes 
through it and the shaping imagination make the whole vision a new 
and higher thing. St. John boldly places in the midst of the throne 
'a Lamb as it had been slain,' a daring symbol of our Lord's Sacri- 
fice of Himself on the Cross, which makes His self-sacrificing Love 
the highest thing in the Universe. 'And every creature which is in 
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the 
sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying. Blessing, and honour, 
and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
unto the Lamb for ever and ever' (Revelation v. verse 13). This 
may be interpreted to mean the recognition of the supreme Kingship 
of Love, as revealed on the Cross, making the lordship of man 
over the animal world an elder brother's lordship of blessing. 

A long series of visions of judgment follow, the details of which 
it must be confessed have never yet been identified with events and 
personages in the history of St. John's time. The reason for this 
obscurity is not far to seek. Christians in Asia Minor, to encourage 
and help whom the Book was written, were suffering at the time 
under persecution, as were the Christians in other parts of the 
Empire, for the refusal to participate in Emperor-worship, which 
was held to involve disloyalty to the Empire. The visions were 
prophecies of the coming of Christ to triumph over the rule of 
Satan in the world in general, and the great representative of the 
rule of evil at that time, the world-empire of Rome in particular. 



532 'ALL HAIL' 

Necessarily, the references to Rome and the Roman Empire had to 
be veiled as much as possible, for to speak plainly of the guilt and 
the punishment of Rome would have entailed deplorable conse- 
quences to the whole Christian community. Had the contents of 
the Book been easily understood by heathen readers, a general pro- 
scription of all Christians as enemies of the Empire would have 
followed. Persecution was going on front time to time in dif- 
ferent places for the refusal of Emperor-worship, but there was no 
general proscription as yet throughout the Empire. 

A great change had come over the attitude of the Christians to- 
wards the Empire since St. Paul in Romans, and St. Peter in i 
Peter, had both of them urged complete submission to the Em- 
peror and his Government. 

The Roman Empire, as the great enemy of the Church of Christ, 
had become identified in the eyes of Christians, when St. John wrote 
this book, with the Empire of Evil in the world. It possessed the 
authority and embodied the spirit of Satan. The Roman Emperor 
had become the Wild Beast, and the Church of Christ was engaged 
in a conflict the issue of which was to be settled by the coming of 
Christ in judgment and the fall of Rome, described in chapter xvii. 
as 'the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with 
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,' who sits 'upon a scarlet coloured 
beast, full of names of blasphemy' (verses 3-6). 

What was the cause of this astonishing change? The immediate 
cause is to be found in the catastrophe which had taken place in 
Rome in July 64 a.d._, the great fire which destroyed for nine days 
the capital of the Empire. This fire, which caused untold misery to 
vast multitudes, was universally attributed to the Emperor Nero, 
who, fearful of a revolution, determined to transfer the guilt with 
its punishment to the Christians in Rome, already unpopular owing 
to the strictness of their lives. As Tacitus had the worst possible 
opinion of Christianity, considering that it involved hatred of the 
human race, his evidence in the Annals, which is supported by that 
of Suetonius, cannot be questioned. 'A huge multitude were con- 
victed,' he writes, 'not so much on the charge of incendiarism, as 
for their hatred of the human race.' These martyrs were put to 
death with the most frightful tortures, the Emperor's cruelty being 
on a par with his cowardice. The Annals tell the story: 'And 
various forms of mockery were added to increase their dying agonies. 
Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were condemned to die 
by the mangling of dogs, or by crucifixion, or to be set on fire and 
burned after twilight to supply a nightly illumination. Nero oflFered 
his own gardens for this spectacle, and gave a chariot race, mixing 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 533 

with the mob, and dressed as a charioteer, or driving about among 
them.' The worst torture, the burning, with a stake to hold up the 
chin, as living torches, evidently made a lasting impression in Rome, 
to judge by Juvenal's allusions to it in his eighth satire. 

The suddenness of this change in the attitdue of the Imperial 
Government from protection to persecution must have greatly in- 
creased the horror with which the Christians regarded this atrocious 
injustice. The news of the suffering of the Brethren would, of 
course, be carried to the Churches in all parts of the Empire, but 
something more than mere reports of persecution the writer had 
"not witnessed is needed to account for the white-hot wrath against 
Rome and the Emperor Which glows in the pages of the Revelation. 
The accounts St. John gives in chaps, xvii. arid xviii. describing the 
judgment of Babylon, that is Rome, have the personal note of one 
who had been present in Rome, and witnessed the persecution. The 
judgment is that the woman arrayed in scarlet, who represents 
Babylon, is to be burned with fire, and at the smoke of her burning 
the writer cries, 'Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles 
and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her' (Revelation xviii. 
20). This seems a clear reference to the Nerohian persecution. 
Again in chapter xix., when the Word of God, faithful and true, the 
King of kings, the Lord of lords, has smitten the forces of evil, we 
read : 'And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that 
wrought miracles before him, with which he had deceived them 
that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped 
his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire, burning 
with brimstone' (Revelation xix. verse 20). Could anything be more 
appropriate as a symbol of punishment than a lake burning with 
brimstone for the Emperor Nero, who had burned the Christians 
alive to light his Vatican gardens by night? May not this imagery 
of the lake of fire and brimstone, to which St. John returns in the 
next chapter, have been inspired by the righteous indignation of one 
who had watched with haggard eyes, his martyred brethren in their 
pitchy tunics bathed in lakelets of sulphurous flame, lighting the 
Imperial gardens, while the 'Wild Beast' Emperor drove his chariot 
up and down to enjoy the spectacle of their torments? Thus un- 
derstood, the imagery of the fire and brimstone would represent a 
just judgment of exact retaliation on the spirit of evil represented 
by the Beast, that is the Emperor Nero, the guilty author of the 
great persecution, and the false prophet, which means probably the 
priesthood of Emperor-worship. But it must always be remembered 
that St. John, if at times 'the Son of Thunder,' the natural man in 
him, spoke out, was fully aware that the Captain of the Armies of 



534 'ALL HAIL' 

Heaven, the Christ, always overcomes evil with good, and that His 
servants, the Christian Churches, are to win a spiritual victory over 
the Beast, not by the sword (' he that killeth with the sword must 
be killed with the sword,' Revelation xxiii. verse lo), but by quiet 
martyrdoms — the way of the cross — and patient and gentle endur- 
ance of savage persecution, the patience and faith of the Saints. The 
Neronian persecution in Rome made itself felt long after in a new 
attitude towards Christians, an increase in local persecutions in 
the provinces for the refusal of Emperor-worship, the demand for 
which was made the means of discovering Christianity and the re- 
fusal of which brought recusants to execution. Against this wor- 
ship, the direct worship of the Emperor's image or statue, the 
Church spoke out decidedly, and St. John in this Book of the 
Revelation urges repeatedly the duty of Christians to refuse to 
comply, even at the cost of enduring torture and death. It will be 
enough to quote two passages. The first contains a tremendous 
warning of the consequences of this worship, a warning evidently 
required in the province of Asia, where temples for Emperor-wor- 
ship were numerous, and the worship enforced rigorously by the 
whole power of the province. 

'And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice. If 
any man worship the beast and his image, and received his mark in 
his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of 
the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the 
cup of his indignation ; and he shall be tormented with fire and brim- 
stone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the 
Lamb : and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and 
ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast 
and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name' (Rev- 
elation xiv. verses 9-11). 

The second is a vision of victory, the reward of those who have 
been faithful unto death, 'which had not worshipped the beast, 
neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their fore- 
heads, or in their hands ; and they lived and reigned with Christ a 
thousand years' (Revelation xx. verse 4). 

We have assumed already that the Beast (or rather Wild Beast) 
represents the Roman Emperor, as is indeed sufficiently clear. 
Turning to chapter xiii. verse 18, we read : 'Here is wisdom (i.e., this 
the meaning), Let him that hath understanding count the number 
of the beast : for it is the number of a man, and his number is Six 
hundred threescore and six.' Here St. John gives us a means of 
identifying the particular Emperor of whom he writes, and whom 
he did not dare to name. 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 535 

It has been found that the name of Nero Caesar, written in He- 
brew letters, amounts in numerical value to 666. The value of the 
Hebrew letters severally is 50 + 200 + 6 + 50+100 + 60 + 200 = 666. 
This identification, though not absolutely certain, seems highly prob- 
able, and the earliest Christian writers on the subject connect some 
one of the Emperors with the Beast. Some early Christian students 
came near this solution long ago, Irenseus tells us, with the words 
Lateinos (a Latin) or Teitan (an old name for the sun), the value 
of either of which was 666. They perceived clearly that the Beast 
here represented the Roman Emperor, but till the spelling in Hebrew 
letters was thought of, the number of the Beast would not work out 
to spell Nero's name. 

But what one feels is that this and like discoveries, even if they 
became unquestioned certainties, while they would increase the dis- 
tinctness of the meaning of the visions and add to the interest, would 
in no way appreciably add to the real value, which is to be found in 
the spiritual meaning, the religious message of the Book. Whether 
these identifications are made or not — and numbers of other identi- 
fications have been made, most of them with very limited probability 
— the message remains the same, the certainity of the manifold com- 
ing of Christ to His Church and to the World and the certainty of 
His ultimate victory. 

The whole Book pulses and thrills with a glorious faith in Christ 
which flames up in the teeth of circumstances, and faces present fail- 
ure and even persecution and death in the realised consciousness of 
final triumph over evil. This was the dauntless, God-given faith in 
Christ and His Body, the Church, and His cause, the higher destiny 
of man, of which the same St. John wrote at a later date in his first 
Epistle: This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
faith' (i John v. verse 4). Assuming that the book was written by 
St. John in his living entombment in Patmos, it is a splendid example 
of the liberty Christ bestows, for this voice from an earthly prison- 
house is full of the freedom and the joy of highest heaven. 

One identification, however, is really important. It is to be found 
in chapter xvii., which tells of the Fall of Rome, unmistakably meant 
by the name of Babylon. The scarlet-coloured Beast in this chapter 
is the Emperor and its seven heads the seven Emperors. We read 
in the tenth verse, 'And there are seven kings ; five are fallen, and 
one is, and the other is not yet come. The five kings are interpreted 
to be: Augustus, Tiberias, Gains (Caligula), Claudius, and Nero: 
the sixth king then reigning was thus Galba. Nero killed himself 
to escape capture in June 68 a.d., and Galba was murdered in Jan- 
uary 69. The date at which the Revelation was given to St. John 



536 'ALL HAIL' 

may, therefore, be placed between June 68 and January 69. This 
date is supported indirectly by the eleventh chapter, the beginning 
of which shows clearly that the book was written before the Temple 
and Jerusalem fell, in the year 70 a.d. The later date, in the 
reign of Domitian, though well supported by tradition, especially 
by Irenseus, is contrary to the internal evidence, and the earlier 
date, either in Galba's reign or at any rate before the fall of Jerusa- 
lem, helps us very materially to arrive at a right solution of the 
problem of the authorship. 

The problem is briefly this : How could the mind which wrote 
the Revelation have written the Gospel? and one may say at once 
that the difference of style is so considerable between these books 
that, if a late date in Domitian's reign be given to the Revelation, and 
an earlier date be given to the Gospel, it is impossible to understand 
how they could have had the same author. Spiritually the Gospel 
is far in advance of the Revelation. The man who wrote the Reve- 
lation might well advance, in years spent in Christian life and Chris- 
tian meditation, to the calmer, loftier, and larger vision of truth in 
the Gospel. The man who had reached that standpoint, the highest 
reached by any writer in the New Testament except himself in a few 
passages in his first Epistle, could not have gone back to the cruder 
and less lofty standpoint of the Revelation. 

Taking the date of the Revelation to be before the year 70 and 
the date of the Gospel to be nearly thirty years later, the spiritual 
progress shown is natural and credible. The early date which has 
been here assigned to the Revelation helps us also to explain the 
solecisms of style and especially the mistakes of grammar in the 
Revelation, as contrasted with the absence of such barbarisms in 
the Gospel. St. John, whose native tongue was Aramaic, attempts 
in the Revelation to use Greek as if, like Aramaic, it had no case 
endings. 

By the time he wrote the Gospel, some thirty years later, he had 
become sufficiently familiar with Greek (living in the Greek city of 
Ephesus and among Greek-speaking disciples) to write the Greek 
language without barbarisms, though without idioms. A comparison 
of the contents of the Revelation with the contents of the Gospel 
amply sustains the old view that the two books had the same author. 
Here are a few coincidences : Tn the beginning was the Word, and 
the W,ord was with God, and the Word was God,' begins the Gospel, 
and introduces a name of our Lord which is found also in Revela- 
tion xix. verse 13 : 'And his name is called The Word of God/ 

Our Lord's pre-existence, taught in the first chapter of the Gospel, 
is taught throughout the Revelation implicitly or directly. As the 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 537 

title 'the Word' is common to both Books, so is that wonderfully ex- 
pressive and beauifnl title, 'the Lamb,' which occurs twenty-nine 
times in the Revelation, and nowhere else in the New Tgtament as 
a title of our Lord, except in the Gospel. St. John i. verse 29: 
'Behold the Lamb of God.' In the first chapter of the Revelation, 
seventh verse, we read, 'Behold, he cometh with clouds ; and every 
eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him,' and we remember 
that the piercing of our Lord's side by the soldier's spear is re- 
corded in St. John's Gospel alone. 

Again, in Revelation xxii. verse 17, we find: 'And let him that is 
athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely' : while in St. John's Gospel we read : 'If any man thirst, let 
him come unto me and drink.' 

These coincidences (and the list might be added to) are quite 
sufficient for our purpose. The same remarkable mind is certainly 
to be discovered in both books • and thus the internal evidence con- 
firms the ancient tradition of the Church. The religious value of the 
Book, while less than that of the Gospel, is very high: Christ begins 
and Christ ends it. 

The faith in a Risen and Glorious Christ, who is at once 'the 
Lamb slain fro;m the foundation of the world,' and 'the King ol 
kings and Lord of lords' (Revelation xix. veres 16), is the inspira- 
tion of the Book, He is not only placed far above all created beings, 
but to Him belongs of right the title of eternity. 'Alpha and Omega : 
the begipning and the end, the first and the last' (Revelation xxii. 
verse 13). 

Finally, He shares the throne of God : 'And he shewed me a pure 
river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne 
qf God and of the Lamb. . . . And there shall be no m'ore curse : 
but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his 
servants shall serve him' (Revelation xxii. verses i, 3). 

He is also, equally with God, the Temple and the Light of the 
Holy City, New Jerusalem. 

'And I saw no temple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, 
neither of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten 
it, and the Lamb is the light thereof (Revelation xxi. verses 22, 23). 

It may be noted that in the last verse, Christ, the true Light of the 
first chapter of the Gospel, is the Light of the New Jerusalem; an- 
other coincidence which marks the one authorship. 

The Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is as necessary to the 
Churches of the twentieth century as it was to those of the first. 
As the Risen and Ascended Christ was coming to the nations then — 



538 'ALL HAIL' 

a manifold coming, which St. John in this Book strove to help the 
Church to realise — so He is coming now. 

To help men to realise that manifold coming in the life of the 
community, as well as in the life of the individual, was the main 
object of the message of the Book of the Revelation. 

The coming of Christ is intimately connected with its result, which, 
as He comes and is received as Lord by the individual and the 
society. He gradually effects, narhely, the conquest over evil in both. 
Our Lord's coming to us must be met by our overcoming evil for His 
sake, and by the power which our union with him communicates to 
us we are able to overcome it. St. John remained an optimist, 
though looking out from Patmos over the whole world of that day 
lying in wickedness. His faith remained steadfast in Christ, the 
divine victor over evil, who could and would give victory at last 
to all His faithful followers. In the midst of his living death at 
Patmos, he saw the day of that victory as if it had already come. 
He saw before his eyes the first fruits in the redemption of the in- 
dividual ; he saw in the future the perfect harvest in the redemption 
of society. His faith, which has been marvellously justified through 
the centuries, in the very gradual but real fulfilment of his predic- 
tions, expresses itself in the vision of a new heaven and a new earth 
to which the redeemed society, represented however imperfectly by 
the universal Church, comes down from God. Revelation xxi. i-6: 
'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and 
and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 
And I John saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down from 
God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying. Behold, the Taber- 
nacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there 
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, or crying, neither shall there 
be any more pain : for the former things are passed away.' 

The vision of the New Jerusalem, the society of the future, the 
kingdom of God which Jesus brought to man, was intended firstly to 
sustain and encourage the persecuted Christians of the times when 
it was written, and secondly to fulfil the same office to all Christians 
for all time. The life of the citizens of this ideal society is simply 
the common life of man, redeemed and consecrated by the self- 
sacrificing love of Christ, who gives to those in union with Him, and 
through them to the world, this high and heavenly love as the 
inspiration of their lives. Revelation xxi. verse lo : 

'And he carried ,me away in the spirit to a great and high moun- 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE 539 

tain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending 
out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light was 
like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
crystal ; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates ; and 
at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are 
the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel : on the east 
three gates ; on the north three gates ; on the south three gates ; and 
on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve 
foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the 
Lamb. . . . And I saw no temple therein; for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no 
need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory 
of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the 
nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and 
the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And 
the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day : for there shall be no 
night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the na- 
tions into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that 
defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: 
but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. And he 
shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding 
out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the 
street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, 
which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every 
month : and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
nations. And there shall be no more curse : but the throne of God 
and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: 
and they shall see his face ; and his name shall be in their foreheads. 
And there shall be no night there ; and they need no candle, neither 
light of the sun ; for the Lord giveth them light, and they shall reign 
for ever and ever.' 

Such is St. John's picture of the ideal redeemed society which is 
to reach and regenerate all the nations of the earth. Redemption 
of the individual has long been an accepted fact, but the redemption 
of the larger organism, the community, is necessarily slower in 
coming; but what has been accomplished — the achievement of the 
Holy Spirit of Christ in the world — points to greater and greater 
achievements, to nearer and nearer approach to the ideal perfection 
of the Holy City. The organized effort to overcome evil in the 
community, the purposeful life lived for the regeneration of society 
is commoner to-day than ever before. Evils bulk larger before us 
because we have begun to observe them, and to consider how we are 
to remove them. But optimism ought to be far easier for us 



540 'ALL HAIL' 

than it was for St. John. We have the evidence of what has been 
clone to cheer us on to a hopeful estimate of what can be done. 
Dur duty to-day is exactly what St. John urged on Christians of 
his time. It is to overcome evil with good, both in ourselves and in 
the society to which we belong. That is the way to hasten and to 
welcome the Lord's coming. 

Practical attempts to effect the regeneration of society are numer- 
ous, and deal with various aspects of the. general evil from which 
society as well as the individual suffers. These attempts, where 
they proceed from an ardent desire for the betterment of the com- 
thimity, even when they do not clciim the name of Christian, are 
eminently Christian. We must content ourselves here, owing to our 
limited space, with mentioning one of the most hopeful of recent 
attempts to regenerate the rising generation — the George Junior 
kepublic at Freeville, in New York State, which has worked out a 
wonderfully successful method of reclaiming boys and girls who 
have made a bad start in life. The essential principle of this 
method is self-governrtient, the appeal to the latent capacities of 
citizenship in the young. The golden rule of the institution, learned 
from experience, is that the inmates should work for what they once 
received as charity — a rule loiig ago anticipated by St. Paul, when 
he wrote to the Thessalonians the command 'that if any would not 
work, neithet" should he eat.' The great principle of self-govern- 
'ment, though its wonderfully good effect on boy and girl character 
was all Mr. George's own discovery, was also long ago anticipated 
hy St. Paul, who insisted oh it as an essential principle of the Chris- 
tian community, e.g., 'Dare any of you, having a matter against an- 
other, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?' 

In the George Junior Republic a single place of worship suffices 
for all the different denominations, being us'ed at one tiiHe for one 
denomination and at another time for another. The idea of dis- 
ciplining the character by an ordered mode of common life is, of 
course, not peculiar to Mr. George's institution. The communities 
of monks that grew out of the early hermits exhibited the effective 
working of this idea, though in place of self-government they d'e- 
pended on the obligation of obedience to a Superior. Here we may- 
look at our picture of a monk in a tree. 

A word must be said in conclusion on an interesting feature of 
the Book of the Revelation : the Hymns of the Redeemed, the Songs 
of Heaven, in which we have perhaps the earliest hymns of the 
Church, except some passages in St. Paul's Epistles. The hymns to 
be now given are taken from the Authorised Version printed in para- 
graphs. The singing of the first hymn is in Heaven. The Lamb 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS ON THE BIBLE S4i 

alone has been found worthy to open the sealed book of God's pur- 
poses for mankind. Revelation v. verses 8-14: 'And when he had 
taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell 
down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden 
vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung 
a new song, saying, 

Thou art worthy to take the book, 

And to open the seals thereof: 

For thou wast slain, 

And hast redeemed us to God by thy blood 

Out of every kindred, and tongue. 

And people, and nation; 

And hast made us unto our God 

King and priests: 

And we shall reign on the earth. 

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the 
throne and the beasts and the elders : and the number of them was 
ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands; say- 
ing, with a loud voice. 

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 
To receive power, and riches. 
And wisdom, and strength, and honour. 
And glory, and blessing. 

And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under 
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard 
I saying. 

Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, 
Be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, 
And unto the Lamb for ever and ever/ 

Again in the fifteenth chapter of the Revelation we hear the Hymn 
of the martyrs who had suffered death for their refusal to join in 
Emperor-worship. Revelation xv. verses 2-5 : 'And I saw as it were 
a sea of glass mingled with fire : and them that had gotten the victory 
over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over 
the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass having the harps 
of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, 
and the song of the Lamb, saying. 



542 'ALL HAIL' 

Great and marvellous are thy works, 

Lord God Almighty; 

Just and true are thy ways, 

Thou King of Saints. 

Wiho shall not fear thee, O Lord, 

And glorify thy name? 

For thou only art holy : 

For all nations shall come 

And worship before thee; 

For thy judgments are made manifest.' 

Lastly may be given the Hymn of rejoicing with which the Church 
of Christ welcomes the mystic union with her Lord (Revelation xix. 
verses 6-8) : 'And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, 
and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunder- 
ings, saying. 

Alleluia : 

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 

Let us be glad and rejoice. 

And give honour to him: 

For the marriage of the Lamb is come, 

And his wife has made herself ready.. 

And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean 
and white : for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.' 



THE END. 



ALL HAIL 



SIMPLE TEACHINGS 
ON THE BIBLE 



BY 



BARONESS FREDA de KNOOP 



NEW YORK 
HAROLD OBER 

1911 



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